Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California
Ansel Adams
CONVERSATIONS WITH ANSEL ADAMS
With Introductions by
James L. Enyeart
and
Richard M. Leonard
An Interview Conducted by
Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun
in 1972, 1974, and 1975
Copy No.
(c) 1978 by The Regents of the University of California
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a
legal agreement between the Regents of the University
of California and Ansel Adams, dated September 15,
1978. The manuscript is thereby made available for
research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are
reserved to Ansel Adams during his lifetime or, if
deceased, to the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
until December 31, 1989. No part of this manuscript
may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library
of the University of California at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for
publication should be addressed to the Regional
Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted,
anticipated use of the passages, and identification
of the user.
The legal agreement with Ansel Adams requires
that he or, if deceased, the Ansel Adams Publishing
Rights Trust be notified of the request and allowed
thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be
cited as follows:
Ansel Adams, "Conversations with Ansel
Adams," an oral history conducted 1972,
1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine
Harroun, Regional Oral History Office,
The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1978.
Photograph by Pirkle Jones
Ansel Adams receiving honorary degree from the University
of California, Charter Day, 1961.
Left to right: President Clark Kerr, Ansel Adams, Professor
Joel Hildebrand
TABLE OF CONTENTS — Ansel Adams
•
INTRODUCTION by James L. Enyeart i
INTRODUCTION by Richard M. Leonard vii
INTERVIEW HISTORY viil
INTERVIEW I — 12 May 1972 1
Education and the Creative Process 1
Family Background and Childhood 2
Studying the Piano 6
Beginning in Photography 7
Youthful Experiences 9
Visualization and Music 12
Anticipation in Music and Photography 13
Mariner Photographs of Mars 16
"Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" 17
Literary Titles for Photographs 18
Portraiture 20
Manzanar 23
Early Days and Scientific Concepts 26
The 1915 Fair 28
Religious Concepts and Cemeteries 32
Aesthetics and Ecology 36
INTERVIEW II — 13 May 1972 37
Photographic Equipment 37
Photography and Technology 40
Innovations and Patents 43
Innovations and Aesthetic Demands 44
Making Photographs and Printing Negatives 44
Photographs as Commodities 47
Photography and Politics 49
Group f/64 49
INTERVIEW III — 14 May 1972 52
Stieglitz 52
Influences 56
Taste, Perspective, and Distortion 58
The Photogram 62
Nuclear Bombs and Photographic Materials 63
Nature Photographs: Points of View 64
Quality Levels and Portraits 67
Albert Bender 69
Commissions 70
Albert Bender and His Friends 72
Cedric Wright 75
Musicians and Artists 77
Cults, Controls, and Creativity 81
Prints: Tangible and Intangible Aspects 83
INTERVIEW IV — 19 May 1972 87
The Group f/64 Exhibit 87
Meters, Lenses, and Film Speeds 91
Brigman, Van Dyke, Edwards, and Cunningham 94
Parmelian Prints 97
Noskowiak, Weston, Swift, Holder, Kanaga, and Lavenson 99
Brett Weston and Edward Weston 102
Applied Photography 104
Giving Photography Museum Status 105
Camera Clubs, Groups, and Galleries 110
The Golden Gate International Exposition Exhibit 113
Timing in Photography 115
Edwin Land and the Polaroid Camera System 117
INTERVIEW V ~ 20 May 1972 121
Mortensen 121
Vision and Photography 122
Flash Mishaps 125
Photographic Printing Papers 127
Writing the Basic Photography Books 129
The Zone System 131
Meters and Automation 133
Technique in Relation to Aesthetics 137
Science and the Creative Photographer 138
Sensitometry as a Creative Tool 142
Contemporary Images 146
The Nude 147
Contrivance, Arrangement, and Simulation 149
Meaning, Shape, and Form 151
Time and Reevaluation 153
The Photo League and Politics 154
Working With Dorothea Lange 158
Early Visits to New Mexico 159
INTERVIEW VI — 26 May 1972 159
Indian Art and Architecture 165
Ella Young 168
Santa Fe People 172
Taos Pueblo 175
Paul Strand and a New Approach 181
Santa Fe People, Continued 183
Taos Pueblo, Continued, and The Land of Little Rain 186
More Southwest Friends and Experiences 190
INTERVIEW VII — 27 May 1972 197
The Reproduction of Photographs 199
Viewing Photographs 206
Light Sources and Light Measurement 209
Technological Advances in Photographic Films 211
"The Negative is Like the Composer's Score" 215
Beauty or Therapy? 220
Astronomical Photography and Videotape 221
INTERVIEW VIII — 29 May 1972 227
Early Years in Yosemite 227
Mountain Trips With Francis Holman 232
Perils and Close Calls 236
Sierra Club Trips 240
Yosemite, Continued 244
Photography Workshops and Aspiring Amateurs 246
Joseph N. LeConte in the Sierra 249
The Half Dome Cable 252
Logic and Faith 254
Panchromatic Plates 256
Dreams and Heavenly Bodies 261
Concepts of Conservation and Wilderness 264
Yosemite Concessions 265
INTERVIEW IX — 2 June 1972 266
Sierra Club Photographers 266
Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail 267
Skiing in the Mountains 276
The Sierra and Other Ranges 279
Alaska 281
Aerial Photography 283
Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada 287
Yosemite Photography Workshops 291
INTERVIEW X — 3 June 1972 296
Skill in Music and Photography 296
The Friends of Photography 301
Museums and Critics 305
Proper Disposition of Photographs 311
Financial Practicalities 313
Original Prints 314
One-Man Shows 318
The Creative Intention 320
Exhibit Prints and Archival Factors 321
INTERVIEW XI — 4 June 1972 324
Printing Earlier Photographers' Negatives 324
Eastern Visit, 1933 328
The Stieglitz Exhibit and the Adams Gallery 335
35 Millimeter and 2 1/4 Cameras 337
Photographs for Magazines 342
Assignments 346
Working With Dorothea Lange, Continued 348
Wartime Work 351
Problems Encountered 353
"Making" and "Shooting" Photographs 359
Printing and Papers 361
INTERVIEW XII — 30 June 1972 363
More on Photography Workshops 363
Teachers and Critics 369
The Development of the Zone System 372
The Art Center School 372
The California School of Fine Arts 374
Large Photographs 375
Photographing a Potash Mine 379
Photographing the Carlsbad Caverns 381
Preserving Negatives 383
The Late Thirties and the Fair 386
Photographic Industry Attitudes 387
INTERVIEW XIII — 1 July 1972 389
A Pageant of Photography 389
Land, Kennedy, Stieglitz, Norman, and Steichen 391
A Pageant of Photography, Continued 394
Aspects of Edward Weston 398
Landscape Photography and Taste 400
The Museum of Modern Art 401
"The Family of Man" 403
Nancy Newhall 404
Various Exhibitions 405
Geraldine McAgy and Lisette Model 409
Frank Lloyd Wright 411
Civil War and Frontier Photographs 413
More on the Manzanar Photographs 415
Museums and Galleries 417
Yosemite Today 422
INTERVIEW XIV — 2 July 1972 423
Richard McGraw 423
Publications 425
Guggenheim Fellowships 431
Morgan & Lester, Morgan & Morgan 436
Color in Photography 440
Portfolios and Publishing, 1948-1952 444
Aperture Edited by Minor White 449
Beaumont and Nancy Newhall 456
Traveling Exhibits 459
"This is the American Earth" 462
Ecology and Rationality 471
Book Publishing 473
INTERVIEW XVI — 8 July 1972 478
Work in Progress 478
The Pageant of History in Northern California 479
Making Photographs, 1972 488
Reproduction Rights 490
More Books 493
Government-Sponsored Exhibits 496
Photography Critics 499
Honors and Hawaii Books 501
INTERVIEW XVII — 9 July 1972 503
Photographing Wineries and Vineyards 503
Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch 508
"Images and Words" Workshops 511
The Design of Printed Material 513
Scientists and Optics 515
Working With the Polaroid Corporation 521
Revising the Basic Photography Books 527
Hawaii Books, Continued 529
Signed Prints and Limited Editions 532
INTERVIEW XVIII — 14 July 1972 534
Dreams 534
1963 Exhibition and The Eloquent Light 534
Traveling Prints and "Theme Shows" 538
Honors 541
Fiat Lux 543
Illustrating Jeffers and Other Writers 558
What Does a Photograph Do? 561
Conflicts and Friendships 562
INTERVIEW XIX — 15 July 1972 565
More on Reproduction Rights 565
Darkrooms 569
Darkroom Tour 572
Formulas and Procedures 578
INTERVIEW XX (Sierra Club Interview I) — 16 July 1972 582
Early Aesthetic Impact of Yosemite 582
"Some Wild Experiences" 585
Animals and People in the National Parks 587
Sierra Club Indoctrination, 1923 594
Concepts and Techniques of Conservation 595
Forces For and Against Conservation 601
Balancing Preservation and Recreation 606
INTERVIEW XXI (Sierra Club Interview II) — 11 August 1972 608
Sierra Club People 608
Hetch Hetchy 613
Atomic Power Plants 615
Private Interests and the Public Interest 617
The Sierra Club and the Government 622
The Park Service and the Forest Service 624
Trans-Sierra Highways, Continued 632
The National Geographic and the Sierra Club Bulletin 636
INTERVIEW XXII (Sierra Club Interview III) ~ 12 August 1972 637
Sierra Club Outings 637
More Sierra Club People 643
Sierra Club Campaigns 646
Protection and Overprotection 653
Citizens' Campaigns 659
The Sierra Club and Its Chapters 661
INTERVIEW XXIII (Sierra Club Interview IV) -- 13 August 1972 664
Sierra Club Publications 667
Zoning 671
The Sierra Club Decision-Making Structure 672
Leadership Conflicts 675
Publication Problems 680
Conservation Conferences 683
Gifted People 684
Conflicts, Continued 686
Preserving Wilderness Through Legislation 690
INTERVIEW XXIV (Sierra Club Interview V) — 8 September 1972 691
The Sierra Club Foundation 694
Dams and Reservoirs 696
Transferring Properties to Public Ownership 699
A Western Club or a National Club? 705
Protecting and Administering Public Lands 706
The Alaska Pipeline 708
"The Conscience of the Board" 709
A Publications Program 714
The Future of the Sierra Club 716
INTERVIEW XXV — 19 May 1974 721
Recent Exhibits 721
Polaroid Prints 725
Lighting Pictures 725
Plans 726
INTERVIEW XXVI — 23 February 1975
Art Festival at Aries 727
Images 1923-1974 729
White House Visit 735
Park Problems and Solutions 736
Death of Nancy Newhall 740
More on the Friends of Photography 741
Future and Recent Events 743
INDEX 748
BOOKS BY ANSEL ADAMS 768
INTRODUCTION, by James L. Enyeart
Ansel Adams has often said that he is "incapable of verbalization on
the content" of his photographs. "If a photograph does not say it, words or
explanation cannot help." However, as the following interview will reveal,
Ansel Adams is a most capable spokesman on his work and a great many other
topics. When he says "verbalization," he means his inability to interpret
or put into words the meaning of his photographs and, in that, he is not alone.
Eloquent words by critics or historians may compliment, describe, or serve in
other ways an artist's creations but, in the end, must yield to the muteness
of the pen when applied to the visual arts.
Two series of events early in Adams' life stand out as significant land
marks in the development of his aesthetic predilections. Chronologically, the
first of the two was his chance meeting with Paul Strand in Taos, New Mexico,
in 1930. Strand had at the time only negatives to show Adams and, as he held
each one up to the light of a window, a dramatic transformation took place in
Adams' understanding of the medium. He felt he understood for the first time
the poetic strength and structural power potential to the photographic medium.
Up to that point, Adams felt that he had been "mostly adrift with my own spirit,
curiosity, and vision." This revelation was of sufficient intensity to inspire
Adams to give up a growing career in music and to devote his life to photography.
(He had for many years trained as a concert pianist.)
For Adams, a commitment to photography encompassed the whole of photography
and all its possible communicable aspects: commercial, documentary, political,
and most important, aesthetic. This experience also revealed to him for the
first time the relevance, spirit, and intent of the work of his friend and
ii
peer, Edward Weston. Prior to his meeting with Strand, Adams had become a
friend of Weston's but had not liked his photographs; however, two years later,
he, Weston, and several other photographers (Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham,
Sonya Noskowiak, and Henry Swift) with similar aesthetic ideals founded Group f.64
a visual manifesto of what they believed the straight photograph to be. In that
same year, Adams had his first important one-man exhibition at the M. H. deYoung
Memorial Museum in San Francisco.
The second series of events which most affected Adams and his subsequent
life as an artist took place between the years 1933 and 1936. In 1933, he made
his first trip to New York and met Alfred Stieglitz with the purpose of showing
Stieglitz his photographs. Stieglitz was supportive and encouraged Adams in
the direction manifested in his photographs. In 1936, Stieglitz gave Adams
a one-man exhibition at An American Place, making him the first young photog
rapher to be shown at Stieglitz1 gallery since Paul Strand in 1917. Following
the opening of the exhibition, Adams wrote a letter to a friend which detailed
the success of the show and the impact Stieglitz was having on his life. The
following is an excerpt from that letter: "To describe what Stieglitz is and
what he does is impossible. He has dedicated himself to an idea and he has
worked like hell for forty years to put the idea over. And it seems to be
going over now with all the inevitability of the tides. The Marin show at
The Museum of Modern Art exceeds anything of its kind shown in America. The
work O'Keeffe is doing now is remarkable. Stieglitz promised me a picture of
New York that will send chills up and down your spine when you see it. And
here is Mr. Adams suddenly handed the most important assignment of his short
iii
life—to maintain photographic standards as one of the Stieglitz group. I was
quite a little stuck-up over the obvious material success of the Chicago show
but what has happened to me here has thoroughly deflated everything but a
sense of humility and responsibility. Nobody has conceit when they are with
Stieglitz. The essential honesty transcends everything. You are or you are
not. The pattern-sequence seems to indicate that I am." Humility, a sense
of responsibility, and a commitment to the art world are all important aspects
of Ansel Adams' character, as is his immutable sense of humor reflected in
his love for puns and limericks.
As an artist, Adams gained an understanding and appreciation of the
"equivalent" concept from his association with Stieglitz. Combined with his
stylistic preference for the straight approach and his love for nature's
grandeur, the "equivalent" aesthetic became for Adams an idea and mission
uniquely his own which remains unrivaled today. Although his famous "Zone
System" serves the science and technology of the medium, its primary purpose
was one of providing a means for attaining the highest quality representation
of the philosophical implications inherent in the straight approach and one's
own personal vision. Equally important is Adams' attempt to make his photo
graphs "equivalents" of his experiences, emotions, sensations, and thoughts.
It is Adams' forging of the straight and equivalent photographic concepts into
a unique style and philosophy of his own that has brought him the many admirers
and honors he enjoys today.
One of Adams' greatest supporters and technical collaborators, Edwin Land,
has said better than any other just what this unique Adams aesthetic is: "Adams
realized that even the most precisely representational photograph is so far
iv
removed from external reality that he was free to use such photography as a
point of departure for his own kind of abstraction. That Adams has chosen
what appears to be the most representational of media and subjects most
prone to be represented, that he has chosen these to be the basis of his most
abstract perceptions, is the first essential step in his genius. The challenge
of making a non-sentimental statement about a grand insight into the abstract
is multiplied a thousand-fold when the components of the subject have names
and reminiscences to characterize them—tree and twig, rock and boulder-
components assembled furthermore not as accidents but in their natural habitats
as ordinary 'beautiful' arrangements. The greater the photographic skill brought
to bear, the more elegant the technology employed, the more serious the threat
to the artist who would lead us step by step in his own direction. For, as
compared with the forms in ordinary abstract art, the direct derivatives from
reality are distractions of deadly power.
"Thus the challenge which Adams undertook to meet was to show that these
meticulously beautiful photographs, these instruments of distraction, could be
directed by him towards unified new insights. He demonstrates that there is
no greater aesthetic power than the conversion of the familiar into the
unbelievably new."
Aside from the inventors of the medium, there have been few photographers
who have made greater or more lasting contributions to the field of photography
than Ansel Adams. His books on the aesthetics and technology of photography
(including those books of his own photographs) are basic to the literature of
the medium. Since 1949, he has been a consultant to Polaroid Corporation,
and he was a major force in the creation of the Photography Department at The
Museum of Modern Art, the Photography Department of the San Francisco Art
Institute, the Friends of Photography in Carmel, and the Center for Creative
Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has helped to establish
major collections of his work and the work of others at major museums and
recently, with his wife Virginia, established the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall
Fellowship at The Museum of Modern Art. In a different vein, but still through
his photography, Adams has been a major spokesman for the Sierra Club (Board
Member 1934-71) and remains today an ardent conservationist; that is, an
active advocate of the preservation and protection of the natural environment.
Ansel Adams is perhaps the most well-known 20th century photographer
throughout the Western world. In fact, his name is probably more familiar to
a greater variety of people (and thereby a greater number) than any other
visual artist, regardless of medium. This fame is not based on the murmurings
of an elite art world and economy, but is the result of fifty years of pub
lishing and exhibiting his photographs in those forums which allowed him to
reach the broadest spectrum of society possible.
If Stieglitz and his circle are considered the pioneers of photography
in modern art, then Adams may be considered the master of those earlier horizons.
His legacy to the art world will be the institutions he helped create, the
technology he subdued, the photographers he inspired and, most importantly,
what he terms his "affirmation of life"--his photographs.
September 14, 1978 James L. Enyeart
Director
Center for Creative Photography
University of Arizona, Tucson
vi
INTRODUCTION by Richard M. Leonard
The life of Ansel Adams is happily condensed and exemplified in a photo
by his close friend Cedric Wright. "Sermon on the Mount" shows Ansel with
tripod and large view camera on the summit of Mount Whitney speaking with almost
religious fervor to a large group of Sierra Club friends. He was telling of the
gentle beauty of the "Range of Light," Muir's favorite subject. Ansel continued
his love of the Sierra Nevada for more than sixty years , to a culmination in the
[forthcoming] publication of his great scenic book Yosemite and the Range of Light.
Ansel always was, and is, a very generous, outgoing person. Hundreds of
his finest prints have been given, without charge, to "the cause" — any
publication that would help public appreciation of the beauty of nature. One
time Ansel and my wife, Doris, were on photographic business in Yosemite. At
Valley View, the great scenic vista of the valley, two little old ladies in
tennis shoes approached Doris asking her to take their pictures with their
camera. Doris suggested the kindly man with the handsome beard. They did, and
Ansel calmly analyzed the controls of the box camera and took a truly beautiful
picture of them. They never knew the fee they missed.
For almost sixty years Ansel has been a member of the Sierra Club. It has
been one of his greatest joys, and in later years one of immense frustration.
He was of the old school, with views similar to the founders of the club and to
Colby, LeConte, and Farquhar. He loved the knowledgeable negotiations for more
park protection, based on facts as to the beauty and importance of the areas
involved. It hurt him to see the leadership of the club pass for a while into
bitter antagonism to the land protection agencies, "kicking their shins," as he
called it, instead of supportive negotiation based on reason.
He comments in his text that I called him "the conscience of the Sierra
Club." That is true. Frank Kittredge, Regional Director of the National Park
Service, told the board of directors of the club one time that "the administrator
almost always has to make financial and political compromises. If the Sierra
Club's position is not far to the 'white,' then the compromise may be a darker
shade of gray."
So at page 67 of my own oral history I stated in a discussion of the
"purists" of the environmental movement that:
"Ansel is so pure he tried for at least ten years to resign (from the
club) before he finally accomplished the resignation after his (1971)
heart attack. Every time he would want to resign, he knew me so well
and seemed to respect my views that I was always able to talk him out
vii
of it. He would say that nobody paid any attention to him and his
views. I would say, 'Yes,' quoting Kittredge again, 'but you don't
know how much more closer to the black we would have voted if it
hadn't been for you arguing for the absolute pure white position.'
In those days the Sierra Club did compromise much more than it does
today. Ansel was an absolute purist and still is."
Upon Ansel's retirement in 1971 the board of directors, in appreciation of
his thirty-seven years on the board and his exceptionally high quality contribu
tions, unanimously elected him an honorary vice-president of the Sierra Club.
Because of Ansel's objection to the new "shin-kicking" method of negotiations,
Ansel refused the honor. In 1974 he was again unanimously elected honorary
vice-president, and again refused the honor.
Finally, in 1978 Ansel had "mellowed" a bit, and the Sierra Club had
matured beyond the strident attitude of the past few years and had clearly
accomplished an immense amount of environmental good. So Ansel graciously
accepted the honor, a fitting rapprochement in the fine work of Ansel and the
Sierra Club over so many years.
Richard M. Leonard
Honorary President, Sierra Club
A July 1978
Berkeley, California
viii
INTERVIEW HISTORY
The interview with Ansel Adams was held in twenty-six sessions. The
first twenty-four began 12 May 1972 and concluded 8 September of that year.
Of them, the last five were devoted to Sierra Club affairs, although the club
had been referred to and some aspects of it discussed in earlier sessions.
The final two sessions in the series were held on 19 May 1974, and 23 February
1975, and were concerned principally with events recent to those dates.
All of the interviewing was done in Ansel Adams's home at Carmel
Highlands, California. Most were held in the comfortable living room; the
only exception was the darkroom tour described in the interview. All of the
sessions were held in the late afternoons on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Most lasted about two and a half hours. Mr. Adams, who had usually spent the
day working in his darkroom, viewed the interview sessions as periods of
relaxation. He preferred not to consider the subject matter in advance but
to discuss spontaneously whatever was brought up. The result is this informal,
wide-ranging, informative series of conversations.
Mr. Adams's editing of the interview transcript, which was sent to him in
sections, was done over a two-year period, in time fitted into a busy schedule.
(He read one section while confined to bed with the flu, another on a trans-
Atlantic plane.) He made brief additions, most in response to queries by the
interviewers, and some corrections, but no extensive changes.
The Regional Oral History Office is grateful to Mrs. Helen M. Land, whose
generous contribution to the Friends of The Bancroft Library made the project
possible, and to the Sierra Club for a contribution toward the part of the
interview that deals specifically with the Sierra Club. In addition, thanks
are due to Helen M. LeConte, long-time friend of Ansel and Virginia Adams and
of the interviewer, for valuable assistance in the project.
Ruth Teiser
Catherine Harroun
Interviewers-Editors
18 August 1978
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
[Interview I — 12 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 1, Side 1]
Education and the Creative Process
Adams: My father [Charles Hitchcock Adams] was a very broad-minded man,
and I guess he must have known that I was a bit of a nut, but he had
faith, and they sent me to various schools. I didn't do at all well,
so then I got into music and decided that was pretty good, and my
father said, "Well now, if you want to you can go to the university,
or study music, and if you do music all I'll ask you is to take some
languages and sciences because they are useful."
So I studied with several private people — a little Greek, and
my father taught me a little French. Had a miserable time with
German — didn't go anywhere with it. And so I was free to do pretty
much what I wanted. All that he wanted was the satisfaction that I
was getting somewhere.
It would have been extremely difficult today to have done that
because of your school regulations and the conventions of education.
This tends to worry me a little bit, because I know our own children
just had to go to the grammar school and the high school, and a lot
of things seemed to be a great waste of time. My son [Michael Adams]
-had a compelling interest in flying. It was later on that he
decided to become a doctor. But I just can't help thinking of the
difference.
Now, Russell Varian (he's dead now, but he was the head of the
Varian Associates, he and his brother) and I understood that even in
high school he couldn't read. He could read silently, and he could
write pretty well, but if you asked him to read this, he couldn't
read it out loud. So of course he was considered a prime nut, but he
was a genius in mathematics and physics, and on the basis of that he
got into Stanford.
That's impossible today, because he didn't have any of the
"credentials."
Adams :
Then his brother, Sigurd, was a very fine engineer. You don't
realize that they were one of the dominant powers, forces, in
the development of radar. And here's a guy who couldn't read
out loud in high school! [Laughter]
So the creative process is something that is inevitable.
You can't control it. You can't stop it. There's nothing you
can do with it. You can wreck it, I suppose, but if a person
was really creative, I don't think he would get into drugs and
things. I think the impulse is there and it's strong.
I guess I'd say that with me the impulse must have been
there, but certainly the family support had a great deal to do
with it.
Family Background and Childhood
Adams :
Teiser :
Adams :
My Adams family came from New England, and my grandmother*
spent the last decade of her life trying to relate us to the
presidential family, but it doesn't work. [Laughter] They are
very distantly related, but nothing that you'd say would be
family.
Were there creative people in your family?
Well, Henry Adams was closer. I don't know just what the
relationship was, but that's almost to the point where any
quality that they had would be so distributed in the genes that
you couldn't count on it after so many generations of diffusion.
My grandmother's family was from Thomaston, Maine. That was the
Hills family, who, it seems, are related to the Hills coffee
people. She found that out. She could trace the ancestry back
to England, to Lord Rosse**, the astronomer. And that's all we
can tell on that side.
On the other side, the Bray family — [to Mrs. Adams] there's
not much known about the Bray family, is there, other than they
came from Baltimore?
Mrs. Virginia
Best Adams: Well, they had Oliver Cromwell as a relative.
Adams :
They had?
*Cassandra Hills Adams, wife of William James Adams.
**William Parsons, Third Earl of Rosse.
V. Adams:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Yes. Auntie "Crumell" they called her; she belonged to the Cromwell
family.* I don't know whether that's an honor or not.
I didn't realize that. So that would be several generations remote.
That was your mother's family?
That was my mother's family.**
How did her parents get to Nevada?
Well, they both in '56 came across the plains and went to Sacramento—
a business — then moved to Carson City, and they lived in Nevada. My
mother was born in Iowa, though, on the way over. My father's
father came west one or two times — started a business and then went
back again and married and came back by ship. I guess he always
came by ship. But the Brays came across in a covered wagon.
So then my grandfather [William James Adams] got in the lumber
business and several things. If all had gone well I might have been
a real playboy, but it didn't. He was at one time supposed to be the
wealthiest lumber man on the coast, and there was a series of
disasters, a couple of crashes, and he lost twenty-seven ships by
fire and shipwreck — lumber ships — in twelve or fifteen years. Just
disaster after disaster. Several mills burned, and in those days
the insurance cost almost as much as what was insured, so if anything
happened, that was just a dead loss. But of course, the accounting
in those days — you just had money in the bank, and if a ship was
destroyed, you just took the money out and built another one. I mean
there was no such thing as cost accounting or — if they took in a
great deal of money, they just took in a great deal of money, that
was all. There were no taxes. It was so simple compared to today.
And offices for these big plants had none of the present style — I
remember as a kid there 'd be a great big shed, you know, and all the
steel work of a lumber mill, and the office would be about as big as
this alcove, a kind of mezzanine supported with rods from the
ceiling, and a staircase. And then there were a couple of ladies,
maybe somebody with an old-fasioned typewriter, and a couple would
be writing in books, and that was the office.
For the lumber mill?
The whole business went through just this little office,
a couple of office boys, and paymasters, you see.
Oh, maybe
*She was a great aunt of Ansel Adams.
**Ansel Adams's mother was born Olive Bray.
Adams: I know years ago my father was secretary of the Merchants Exchange
[in San Francisco], and they controlled the Merchants Exchange
Building. Every Friday it was payday for the men, and my father
would take the voucher to the treasurer to be approved, and then
go to the bank and get the money — greenback money which was put in
little envelopes. And each man had his name on it and the amount
due him. There was no withholding, nothing, just the amount. Then
they'd line up, the janitor, the engineers, and I used to help my
father sometimes. You had to say the names: "Mendota," and Joe
Mendota gets his envelope. Compared to today, you know, it's
amazing that business was that way. But that's getting a little bit
away from your mission.
I remember the whole family. My uncle [William L. Adams] was a
very fine doctor, and he died when I was about ten or twelve, I
think, of diabetes. That was before insulin. And he was a very
prominent doctor, what they called a diagnostician, and a diagnostician
in those days was the equivalent of an internist, an internal medicine
man, today. But I think in the last fifteen, maybe twenty years of
his practice, he saw patients only referred to him by other doctors,
whereas now the internist refers to specialists. All the other
general men around would say, "Well, better go see Dr. Adams on that."
He was the "diagnostic expert."
Teiser: Were you friendly with him?
Adams: He was a very nice man. He was a good student of French, translated
French poetry. His first wife was a nurse whom he met studying
medicine in Paris. She converted him to Catholicism, and he
succeeded in converting half the family. So half of us are heathens,
and the other half are Catholics. [Laughter] I think we're supposed
to be Episcopalians for the record.
Teiser: Did people read to you before you, yourself, read?
Adams: Yes, my father would — very patient. I read very early, though. I
could read at a very early age.
Teiser: Teach yourself?
Adams: Oh, I guess so; just read, you know. I had a phenomenal memory. At
the age of twelve I could look at a page and recite it. In fact,
even when I was first studying music I could take a thing to bed and
read it at night and play it the next morning. I could see the notes.
That facility left me at about sixteen, seventeen. I lost that. Now
I have one of the world's worst memories. But that's all right. It's
perfectly natural that you lose that kind of memory because so many
other things come into the mind. I think that the reason I have a bad
memory now is that there isn't any room. I've got so many things
Adams: going on and thinking about, that I meet somebody and I hear the name
and I forget it. I forget how to spell it. And then it's very
embarrassing, because I remember the face. I can't remember the years
the pictures* were taken in, but I can remember the situation of
taking them. I can go right back, and in most cases I can see the
camera, the lens. I can tell you the exposures. I can remember that
phase very clearly, and a great many things way back to the middle of
the 1920s. I can pretty much point to the camera, the lens. I can
remember I did this with the second Zeiss Protar I had. I remember
that this was a very wide-angle lens with the smallest stop, which was
actually f/56, and you know, I can remember these things. But as for
the dates, I can't remember those at all, and that drives my friend
Beaumont Newhall, the historian, out of his mind because some of my
pictures appear with three or four different dates on the back, so I
use the word "circa" now. So it will be "circa early twentieth
century." [Laughter]
Another very important thing was the location. When I was one
year old we moved out to the new house in San Francisco because my
father wanted to be in the country. It was right in the middle of
the sand dunes near the ocean, and an old house a block or so away
from us was the nearest house. I can remember — just a little kid — I'd
sit at the window and watch my father — in the carriage (they had a man
at the end of the line at First Avenue) — he'd come out on the street
car to First Avenue, and there were two carriages that ran up and down
Lake Street. And you'd have to wait maybe fifteen, twenty minutes,
get in the carriages, and we'd see Papa and the horse clumping out
Lake Street and he would get off at Twenty-fourth Avenue and walk
down on a board walk through the sand to the house. I've got all
those memories — the wild country and the beautiful flowers and Lobos
Creek, and the fog horns, and Bakers Beach right down below. You know,
you had a feeling of very close contact with nature.
And a very interesting thing, when they started developing the
area, there was a man named S. [Stephen] A. Born, a contractor, who
built the houses now in Westclay Park. He did some of Seacliff, but
Westclay Park was his area. And he was a very fine builder, I mean
he always put more wood in than was needed. Some of those houses are
just as sturdy as a rock. I know a friend of mine has a house that
he built in 1918, 1916 I guess, and that house is absolutely solid.
You know its timbers — wonderful construction! But he used to let me
go over to the work room and shed and draw plans, and the architect
and draftsmen were very kind and would show me how to draw, you know,
building plans — what an elevation was, and space problems. I still
remember all that very clearly. I could have been an architect.
*Ansel Adams's photographs.
Teiser: How old were you when you were interested in this?
Adams: Ten, eight or ten. So I learned a great deal of that. And that
helped precision of thinking. Now, this is all very important,
because that gave me a certain precision. Well, you draw a straight
line and measure it, you see. Even showed me how they form a drawing,
leave spaces for the rug, how to figure all the different dimensions,
and how to draw an arch. You know, I just learned — the guy loved to
teach me these things, and he'd give me a T-square and a little desk,
and I'd sit over there in the corner and work.
He said once that I had a couple of good ideas and he was going
to use them. I don't know what they were.
Studying the Piano
Adams: Well, the next thing as far as precision goes, the training in
music, which was with an elderly maiden lady, Miss Marie Butler, who
was a long-time associate with the New England Conservatory of Music.
She came from a Unitarian family from Boston, very precise and
extremely accurate, and had the patience of Job because I was really
pretty scatterbrained. She told my father that I had talent, it was
obvious, but I never was going to get anywhere unless I had discipline,
and the discipline might take anywhere from six months to five years.
Was he willing to stick it out? I mean she was perfectly frank. She
said, "He's extremely scatterbrained. He looks out the window. He
thinks of something else." My father said, "Keep at him," so I had
her for years.
It finally got to the point when I would do, say, a Bach
Invention, it'd have to be note perfect. I mean it, there was no
compromise, and if I didn't, "Bring it back next Friday." I mean no
soft decision. I'd get so damn sick of that thing that I'd just go
out of my mind. But I finally, by feeling obligated, I just did it.
So, I would do it. Fine. I would go to something else, and on, and
on. Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann. And this perfection, and the quality
of tone which I learned from her and, of course, my finger technique —
my hands weren't heavy, so it was impact, you know: lift, strike and
relax. The idea is you strike a key but you relax immediately and
slightly lift the key; that's part of the first exercise you do, to
get that dynamic thing, and then the release. So that gave you a
terrific tempo, you see, and very crisp sound — and that built up,
well, a dependency on accuracy. She wouldn't tolerate any sloppiness.
I remember one day she said, "Well, now, I'm very happy about you,
and you've gone as far as you can go with me, and I think you now
should study with Professor [Frederick] Zech. (Old man then, seventy-
eight.) And he had studied with and assisted Von Bulow.
Adams: And he was a real Germanic — you know, incredible, I'll never forget--
he'd demonstrate technical passages, the only thing he'd ever demon
strate with me. And he said, "Well, you're a little weak on your
double fourths and thirds and sixths." He said, "You must play sixths
like this." And here was this chromatic cascade of double sixths, you
see. [Laughter] I'll never forget hearing this, but it was a totally
impossible thing. But I did it, I got it! But never any one of the
teachers played for me just the plain music, on an imitative basis.
It was all done by encouraging that you ask yourself, "Did this sound
right?" or, "Do you think you really shaped that phrase?" You know,
this dialectic thing.
After Zech I went for six weeks to a woman called Elizabeth
Simpson in Berkeley, who was one of those most satisfactory teachers
as far as the facility of her class was concerned, and she taught
with two pianos, which is I think the most deadly thing you can do,
because all of her class sounded just like her; no individuality.
Now, my father was pretty sensitive, because I came back after a
couple of lessons, and I was playing Schubert, and he came over and
he said, "What's happened, it doesn't sound like you?" And I said,
"What do you mean it doesn't sound like me?" He said, "Well, the
style is not you. You know, I've been listening to you now for quite
a few years." And it occurred to me, well, my gosh, she was "showing"
me. She was playing a phrase — leading me on — and I went a few more
weeks and went to a recital, and it all became perfectly clear that
it was parroting. And she just simply taught that way. She had
immense success. They all played exceedingly well, but they all
sounded just like she did. (Do cats bother you? Because this one is
very friendly.)
Well, then I went to Ben [Benjamin S.] Moore who was an organist-
pianist, and he was a very great influence on my life because he was
also a philosopher and gave the music another dimension. He was also
a purist. And that was the end of my musical training. I worked
with him for years — five or six years, I guess.
Beginning in Photography
Adams: Then gradually I got off into photography, and pretty soon I'm in
photography professionally!
But the important thing is that these precisions were un
obtainable in the photographic world. There was no school of
photography, nothing but going out and apprenticing yourself to
someone who did photof inishing, which I did for a couple of summers,
You know, you learned how to "soup a print," as they called it and,
Adams: oh, terrible stuff — but there was no school relationship, no
academic contact or anything, and there were just two or three very
good photographers who were terribly jealous. [William E. ]
Dassonville was very kind to me. He made photographic papers, and
he helped me a great deal. The other photographers were nice enough,
but, gee, they just hated to give away secrets, you know — as if there
were secrets in simple technology!
I remember Moulin*, the old man. He had a big factory — I'm sure
you know of it — in San Francisco. A big place. He called me up once
and he said, "Mr. Adams, I know we photographers don't like to give
away our secrets because it's all we've got. I don't know how you
feel about it, but I've got to ask a question. Something I just
don't know, and it bothers me." I said, "Well, Mr. Moulin, I have
no secrets, but I'm not an encyclopedia." He said, "What does
potassium bromide do in the developer?"
Now, that is like asking, "What does salt do in soup?" or "What
does yeast do in bread?" It is one of the fundamentals, a restrainer,
and it's been around for nearly a century, and it simply keeps the
developer grains from developing themselves where they have not been
exposed to light, so it prevents fog, and most developers are active
enough to always develop a certain amount of grains that have not
been affected by light, and then you get this fog. You see, if it
has a little restrainer, which is bromide, it puts bromide back into
the halide crystals, and this "clears the whites." But here is this
man who was the biggest photographer in the city, and had the biggest
business and the biggest staff, and nobody on his staff or he knew
what potassium bromide did.
But of course if I really had to tell you what potassium bromide
did and describe the chemical structure, the reaction, that would be
far beyond me from the point of view of a chemist. This is a very
complicated physical chemistry step. But for all intents and purposes,
you know what it does when you add it to the developer. You add
seasoning to food and you don't chemically analyze seasoning; you ask
for saffron or, you know, pepper or something, but you don't give the
chemical analysis of it. But at that time, you see, we weren't getting
information from anybody. Everybody either didn't know or wouldn't
tell.
Teiser: This would have been when?
Adams: The twenties.
*Gabriel Moulin, founder of a major San Francisco photography studio.
Teiser: I see. That late.
Adams: The end of the twenties. And the Moulin episode came in the thirties.
At that time there were only a few — there was Ann Brigman, there was
Imogen Cunningham, there was Dorothea Lange, Consuelo Kanaga, William
Dassonville. As far as I know, they were the only photographers in
the area who had any creativity. (Well, I was on that side of the
fence.) And Dassonville did portraits, pretty good ones, although
to the "trade;" it was soft-focus, and on soft papers. Imogen was
doing portraits. I guess she was the best; she had the greatest
variety of approach. Dorothea Lange was doing portraits and some
Indian work, not very good. Didn't have any technique. Consuelo
Kanaga was a delightful woman and imaginative artist, but again, no
technique. They were trying to say something in a language you can't
write.
So then when I first started in serious photography — that's
1930 — it was people like Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston that
came on the scene. Of course, they found that here we had all these
damn camera club people with hideous taste, imitative stuff, soupy
sentimental business. A lot of them had a very fine mechanical
technique, which was always very irritating to me. [Laughter] They
knew a lot about it, you know, but what they did was terrible
aesthetically. And that led into Group f/64, and this is probably
another chapter entirely. I'm going way ahead.
Youthful Experiences
Adams: I'd say that my first experience in nature was a regional
experience; of Bakers Beach and that whole western part of the City,
which profoundly influenced me; the storms and the fogs and all this
open space. Why I didn't get killed a hundred times on those
Golden Gate cliffs I don't know. I used to go out to Land's End and
climb all over without knowing how to climb, and all alone. I got
into some tight situations.
Teiser: Did you play alone a good deal of the time?
Adams: Oh, yes, yes.
Teiser: You did?
Adams: Yes, I didn't have — well, there were a few boys in the neighborhood.
Nothing really happened that way. It was interesting; I didn't have
any real friends. I just didn't need them. I don't know.
10
Adams: But the other experience was then going to Puget Sound to my father's
plant. It was after 1912 when he started the plant to recoup the
family fortune, and we had this property on Puget Sound. He acquired
the rights to the Classen process. Now, this is chemically interest
ing, but today things have superseded it. It was a way of making
industrially pure alcohol, ethyl alcohol, not methyl or wood alcohol
but just industrially pure ethyl alcohol, 200 proof, from cellulose.
They decided that that area was magnificent because of all the
sawdust and the slash, and all the available wood material which the
lumber mills would just love to get rid of, and they'd send the barges
around all over the Sound and collect tons of this stuff, and then
come back and go through this Classen chemical process which involved
treatment by sulphurous acid, and they made — we still have some — 200
proof alcohol. It's as pure as anything you'll ever get, and more
potent, easily drinkable. The residue of that, the cellulose, was
then mixed with molasses and a few other things (they didn't know
about vitamins then, but "enrichments") and it was sold as cattle food.
It was called Bastol, and that had a great future because it was
relatively light in relation to energy, and it could be mixed with
hay or grain.
And what happened in this case was that industrial alcohol was
at that time a by-product of the sugar industry (the sugar cane
residue). And the Hawaiian sugar trust — you can literally say that
the group got together and decided that this company can't go on.
And they bought out every share of stock they could get, and my
father's brother-in-law* was bribed and he sold out and betrayed him.
It was a terrible blow. My father's lawyer betrayed him. They sold
their stock and got out of it, for a price. It was a terrible blow
to Papa, and they got 54 percent control of the stock, threw everybody
out, put in a dummy board, and wrecked the plant.
Now, it was so important to them, they didn't even try to
salvage some of this beautiful equipment — the machinery was wrecked.
Of course with the S.E.C. today and the rules we have, that couldn't
happen. There's no possible way that you could do a thing like that.
You could buy the stock, but you couldn't put it out of business, you
see — protection of other stockholders is important. Of course, a lot
of people lost quite a little money in it, and my father was just
ruined, and of course in a terrible state over this financial
catastrophe, because he was always a person of the highest integrity.
But when someone of his own family, whom I was named after...! That's
why I don't use my middle name. Ansel Easton was unspeakable as far
as I'm concerned, because I know what he did. My father in fact felt
so much for him he named me after him, Ansel Easton, and unfortunately,
I have to use that name legally, and I just hate it. But you notice I
don't use it in any correspondence or in relation to my work. My
*Ansel Easton; see paragraph following.
11
Adams: professional name is Ansel Adams. But that was a family disruption
and, of course, part of the family went with them, and the other
part stayed with us.
Teiser: How old were you when that happened, about?
Adams: Oh, I guess I was about twelve or thirteen when it happened.
Teiser: Were you upset by that?
Adams: Well, I knew something had happened, because we went from a cook and
a maid and a governess to doing it all yourself! [Laughter] You know
what I mean — quite down and out. Papa spent a lot of time after that
trying to recoup his plant. And they had an antimony process, and
inferior people in management. The Bank of California, which my
grandfather helped found, had carried the loans and mortgages on the
properties for years and years, and finally the law caught up with
them and they said, "We have to call the loan." But it was with
great regrets. I mean my father's word was like my grandfather's.
He'd go in and say, "I need a thousand dollars." "Well, here it is."
It was just this kind of an honorable thing.
I haven't had to lately, but in the last twenty years — fifteen —
I had to go to the Wells Fargo or the Bank of California and borrow
five thousand or so — got a job coming up — and they'd say, "Oh, yes,
sure, Mr. Adams, we don't need any collateral with you." And, you
know, you think, "Well, that ain't bad," [laughter] to have that
reputation. Of course, legally, they have to show something
protective.
Yes, I think it did have an effect on all of us, and I think it
probably was something that stirred me to think realistically when I
first went to the Sierra with my family in 1916, when I was fourteen
years old. I think my mother reacted very badly to this catastrophe,
and I think that tension probably encouraged me to go more into the
mountains.
So, as I said I went early to Puget Sound, and then we went down
to the Santa Cruz mountains, and then my father became secretary to
the Astronomical Society [of the Pacific], and we used to go down to
Mount Hamilton often. I never went East until 1933. Oh, yes, we did
make a trip to Los Angeles when I was about nine or ten, and we
stayed at the Alexandria Hotel, and I remember going around and
seeing oranges and snow peaks and ostriches, and I can remember this
brilliant, clear airl Still can recall it! Something like Santa Fe,
New Mexico, has today. Certain moods in areas. I still remember
that well in Los Angeles; we were there about six weeks.
Harroun: That was about 1910?
12
Adams: That was 1910 or '12, yes. We went on the streetcars — the Pacific
Electric Railway. But absolutely clear, you know, I recall that
whole feeling of clarity. It was like this place, really, as it is
now. [Carmel Highlands]
Teiser: Were you conscious as a youngster that things impressed you visually?
Adams: Yes, very much so. (Do you want anything now to drink, soft, hard,
moderate?)
Teiser: No, not a thing.
Adams: You've met Jim Taylor?
Teiser: No, we haven't. How do you do.
Adams: I would have introduced you, but I was swallowing.
Visualization and Music
Teiser: You said you were aware that you had a particular visual sense?
Adams: Yes, I think I always had. There comes a romantic period when you
can visualize literary realities. Say you hear music, and you —
well, you're reminded of certain things. You see tangible images,
and that's the basis of all these terrible titles some music has,
like Moonlight Sonata. Whoever thought of moonlight rippling on
the water? I never got that corny. The Moonlight Sonata was
always a bad example, but you did get such things as the "Legendes"
of Liszt, "St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds," and "St.
Francis of Paulus Walking on the Waves." This is pictorial music.
Well, at one age of life I'd get into that kind of direct pictorial-
ism. I guess you'd call it "literary." But then it wasn't very
much later — about five years — before my visual impression of music
was quite abstract. I guess I got that mostly from Ben Moore and the
music of Scriabin. But I'd remember everything I'd seen very clearly,
and that's why the camera was so rewarding. I would capture what I
saw, and the dissatisfaction that the image wasn't what I'd really
"seen" was one of the things that kept me going. The average person
just goes "click" and there's Grandma, and that's the satisfaction
with the image. But in my case, the required image or the ideal
image which we see and hear was not casually seen in the photograph;
therefore I worked hard to get it. And when I got it, that was the
beginning of my real photography, and the actual visualization,
where you look into the world, you see a combination of shapes, and
you see them in terms of the final picture. You don't see them
13
Adams: "outside" any more. And then you've got to get your eye, your
camera, and everything around you into that position which will
support that visualization. It's all intuitive. It has to come
very quickly. That means you have to practice. If I don't go out
with the camera for quite a while, I find myself very, very clumsy.
I've just lost physical contact with the camera.
I have a little difficulty seeing and framing my images. Like,
what would I do with you [Harroun] sitting there with your pencil
and pad? I could go "click" and get a perfectly good record of you,
which you would date on the back, and it would be very valuable. I
think I have enough mechanics to get a good exposure, but that
wouldn't be a picture. The picture would be the combination of all
the relationships, the black line on your dress, and the black lines
on the blanket [on the couch], and- the element of light, and the
distractions of the environment to get rid of. If you can't get rid
of it, use it. But it's all quite plain in the end! Thousands of
things are going on at one time, and you can't be aware of all those
things, and you can't add conventions to it, because if you did that
you'd ruin it.
It's just the way you practice the piano for years to get a
facility in your fingers, tone control, shaping, dynamics, and when
you play you can't think of all the elements; you just do it. One
example, a friend said, "Well, you take the C Major Sonata of Weber
and you take the last movement, the Perpetual Motion and the Rondo.
You're playing four parts, sixteen hundred notes a minute." You have
to have your harmonics, your dynamics (which is phrase shape), your
rhythm or your accent, and then above all that, the pecular thing
in music — the style — the intangibles. And you practice. You're a
musician; you've spent ten years or twenty, and you play this thing.
And if you tried to even put it in a computer (it is going through
a mental computer) — but there's no ordinary computer made that can
handle what you're doing.
Anticipation in Music and Photography
Adams: I was talking about this just a little while ago. The mind is so
far ahead of the computer except in some things, but in music, you
see, we're anticipating. We have a whole new pattern of thinking,
unconscious thought. You are anticipating things with appreciation
of a tenth of a second's psycho-physical lag. And you're hearing
harmonics, and the harmonics are developing in such a way that at
a certain point you instinctively know you're ready for the next
note. If you waited a tenth of a second until those harmonics had
resolved, you'd be late. So, that's part of the structure that
Adams: people don't think about. I mean, when you hear music, that's what
you hear. You hear this tremendously complex thing which can be
broken down into a few categories, but it's really beyond literary
definition. You can make a record of it. Of course, you don't get
everything, even the finest records are not complete, but they are
very close to it. You can break those records down on oscilloscopes.
I've seen violin records broken down, recorded and then re-recorded
slow, cutting out, cutting down to one-hundredth the time, and then
making oscillographs and measuring the harmonics. I was absolutely
fascinated with the complexity. You finally get a pattern where
this other note — this thing which on the piano would be touch or
on the violin which, I guess, would be intonation — why one is
beautiful and the other isn't, and yet they are the same notes, and
everything superficially the same.
And the same thing with the camera. I mean ten people can go to
exactly the same scene and get ten totally different images, although
they might have the cameras in the same position. Superficially the
tree and the rock would be the same, but there's something else, you
see. There's the way they felt it, visualized it, composed it,
exposed it, developed it, and printed it. I guess I'm wandering a
little bit.
Teiser: No, no, this is just fine. Is there a parallel in the sequential
character of music as you were just discussing it and the sequence
of events in a photograph — or is that stretching it?
Adams: No, no. My work is fundamentally static. In other words, I see the
scene, and the scene is changing at a very slow rate. I'm not
talking about a spectacular wave coming in or clouds moving, but I
mean the natural scene is there, and I can think about it and compose
and move around and get this rock or tree right. You know, I have
command of it. Now, you take somebody like [Henri] Car tier-Bresson
(and I've done some of his kind of work, I know directly what it
means). His things are in motion. And the average candid so-called
photographer just gets people on the fly. But, there again is this
anticipation, and this might interest you. I was teaching at the
Art Center School. We were working with students (this was before
the second [world] war), Signal Corps people, photographers.
Gee, it was pretty hard. We didn't have much time with them,
and they were in the army, but they were studying to use the Speed
Graphic. Well, a very intelligent general, one of the few intelligent
generals I've known, said, "I know you people are interested in the
art phase, and that's why we want you to do this, because we can find
all kinds of mechanical people who can give us the answers, but
they're not the kind of answers that we want. We'd like to get these
boys to see and to anticipate. Say you're out in combat, something
is happening. You can't wait until something happens and then take a
picture of it. It's happened so fast that you'll be late.
15
Adams: So part of the training that went on for weeks — I'd be upstairs
looking around in the street for something, and suddenly see a
streetcar, a block away, and I'd yell downstairs, "Let's go!" They'd
all arrive with their camera cases and I'd say, "Catch the front of
the streetcar in juxtaposition with that big power pole — I must see
a precise juxtaposition." Well, they opened the case, they got out
the camera, they judged the distance (we had a lot of focus controls)-
"That's a hundred feet." They'd taken the light value measurements
and they knew the approximate exposure, and then they were ready.
Now the point was, if you waited until you saw that car line up
with the pole, then it'd be way over and beyond, because you have at
least a tenth of a second lag. About a third of the students could
hit it right on the nose, could anticipate the juxtaposition. Some
of them would get nervous, you see, and more than anticipate, so
they'd shoot too early. Then, well, after several weeks we'd have
about 90 percent of them doing an exact job. Of course we wouldn't
go back to the same subject, but they'd be more relaxed and see the
problem more clearly as time went on.
[End Tape 1, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Adams: Well, to take this element of anticipation, which is essential, I
think I explained that is inevitable in music, although people don't
think of it in that sense, but in the event — seeing that the event
doesn't trigger itself, at the point of the event, but goes. through
our ears, our "computer" recognition, motor impulse, and nerve and
muscle. I still have a very high reaction, but as you get older it
gets slower, and I still run I think a twelfth, and as high as a
fifteenth of a second on light impulse. You know, you can have
standard tests, and when the light flashes you react. Well, you'd be
surprised; you think you are fast, but then you see the graph, and
here's the light impulse and here's your response, and if you're
tired the response shows more delay.
Anyway, creative people like Cartier-Bresson use this anticipa
tion factor in a highly creative sense, and he was able to get these
marvelous compositions of people in motion. It wasn't only one
person; there may be as many as five all functioning together. He
has an uncanny sense — gestalt patterns, perhaps. We don't know how
to explain it, but in many, many of his pictures, four or five
people will be seen in the ideal moment, and that's why the title of
his book, The Decisive Moment is so apt, because it is that decisive
moment. When he operated the shutter, his "computer" decided the
decisive moment. The real decisive moment is when the shutter
operated, which was at least a tenth of a second after he'd given
the signal. So, he must have anticipated in the creative sense of
the term.
16
Adams: I can make a probe and hit this metal and in a millionth of a
second I'll get a response from this dial, but that's a direct
contact. But if this is moving, and it has to go through my
mechanism, then operate the shutter, at the moment when I think
that's right it'll be too late. So this is a terribly important thing,
and I think in music it's essential, and I don't know in most
photography — well, different degree I'd say in everything. You
anticipate light, you anticipate your position in relation to the
object. You don't think it out, you feel it out. If I'm looking at
you [Harroun] I would move in such a way that that string back of
you would be out, I wouldn't see it. If I can't do it, then I have
to use that string, so I see it another way. But I can't say to the
camera, "Move over on a track six feet and go click." When we think
of all the things photographed. .. 1 1 1
Mariner Photographs of Mars
»
Adams: I have a whole set of the new pictures of Mars taken on the last
Mariner flight, and they are wonderful technological achievements.
A good friend sent them to me. They're not really restricted, but
it's unusual to have so many. And you see in them one of the great
miracles of our time, scientifically speaking. The pictures have
absolutely no aesthetic quality at all except what you read into
them. Now if I were a painter, I could take some of the designs and
spots and features and I could expand them, and I think if I could
be there in space I could have made a better composition. But
[laughter], one, I can't be there in space and, two, I'm a little too
far away. And three, these don't come back as pictures, they come
back as a series of bits, one to a hundred and twenty-eight numbers,
and are recomposed in the computer. A picture is made, and it's
only this big [gesture], as big as your thumb, and scanned with a
television micro-scanner, and —
V. Adams: [In the background] Oh, don't let the cat out!
Adams: — every time the probes come across a change in density in this
image, they give a different number. That relates to intensity and
comes back to us as a continuous tape, and the computer is set up to
receive and interpret the signal.
Now, the scanner works two ways. It records in one direction
the intensity of the image and, returning, it is sending data from
a number of other scientific instruments. When it goes one way, it's
giving the image information, and when it goes back it's giving other
scientific data gain. Hundreds and thousands of lines are involved.
When you see the picture it's really sharp, this big [gesture], but
17
Adams :
Teiser
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams :
the image is only as big as my thumb to begin with. Well, that is
not art. People like, oh, [Gyorgy] Kepes or [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy or
[Herbert] Bayer would say, "Ah, this begins art; this is the new art."
Well, it's another reality you're confronted with, but it doesn't
represent art in itself because you're not seeing and controlling it.
The machine is doing it, and I don't know whether we can always
control it! [To assistant, Ted Organ, holding framed photograph] That
went all around the world, God knows where, and I took the tape off
and it was perfectly beautiful. It has to be cleaned, though.
Travelling exhibit?
Mrs. [Estes] Kefauver.
Embassies program?
Yes.
Remember Mrs. Kefauver, the Art in the
That was part of her project. That's been out for years. And I
opened one box today, a whole box, three hundred pounds of pictures
and frames.
How many photographs in all?
Forty or fifty. I've got a showl I just unpacked one to look at it.
Most beautifully packed stuff you ever saw.
"Monolith, the Face of Half Dome"
Adams: Well, anyway, back to anticipation! Now, what does the artist
really do? I'd go into the mountains as a kid, and I had unbounded
physical energy, which is something that I don't have now. Of
course, nobody realizes when they've got it, you just look back and
you wonder! You know, I could climb two peaks a day with a fifty-
pound pack and still want to photograph in the evening. [Laughter]
But I think the element of anticipation enters into this picture.
Something tells you this is something you recognize, and you begin to
see the picture — visualize it — and you make it. In the early days,
in the early twenties when I was out in the Sierra with the LeConte*
family (LeConte was a marvelous man, a very intelligent man, a really
very important person in Sierra history), he made any number of
photographs on five by seven plates — but hardly any that contain this
*Joseph N. LeConte
18
Adams: particular quality. They're immensely valuable as records, and
they're pleasant. You know, you look at them and they bring back
scenes, but his mind wasn't in the creative direction at all.
See, compare him with William Henry Jackson; he was about the
same. He made thousands and thousands of pictures. Now, another
man of the Jackson period — 1870-1880 — called T.H. O'Sullivan had
another level of vision, and his pictures are always superb composi
tions. While the Jacksons historically were tremendously important,
O'Sullivan had that extra dimension of feeling. You sense it, you
see it. This Half Dome picture* of mine [on wall] was my first really
fine photograph. (I was ready to say, "Well, maybe I should have
stopped and gone into the ready-made clothing business.") Because
this was my first real visualization. I felt the monumental quality,
I saw it intensely. I had two plates with me, I took one with the
standard K2 filter, and I began to realize, why, I'm not creating
anything of what I feel, because I know the shadow on the cliff is
going to be like the sky; it's going to be gray. It will be an
accurate picture of Half Dome, but it won't have that emotional
quality I feel. I had a deep red filter and I used it on my last
plate. And that's the interpretive result — that's what I felt at the
time.
Literary Titles for Photographs
Adams: And this might be the time to bring in the term "equivalent" that
Alfred Stieglitz used, because he made the bridge between the
pictorialists and the creative people. Very difficult I Even today,
the so-called pictorialists have to title everything, you know:
"Autumn Tranquility ," or "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," or "The
Smile of Spring," and all this incredible [laughter] literary
imitation. And Stieglitz said, "Of course, it's all right to say
this is 'Fifth Avenue, Winter;' that's fact." Edward Weston would
say, "Cyprus Number Twenty-three, Point Lobos." But when you begin
to say, oh, "Time to be Home," [laughter] you know, that's an awful
thing.
Well, anyway, Stieglitz tried to break way from that with the
idea of saying, "When I see something I react to it and I state it,
and that's the equivalent of what I felt. So, therefore I call my
print 'equivalent,' and I give it you as a spectator, and you get it
or you don't get it, you see, but there's nothing on the back of the
*"Monolith, the Face of Half Dome," Yosemite Valley, 1927(7). See
also p. 38 and other entries as indexed.
19
Adams: print that tells you what you should get. I put no literary title."
That was a very important thing, and I instinctively felt that way
back in the twenties. I rarely if ever gave a title, a literary
title. I'd give a definitive title like "Rocks, Bakers Beach" (if I
had only put the date on it, Newhall would have been happy), "Golden
Gate Park Number Sixteen," or "Red Slate Peak," and sometimes "Red
Slate Peak, Evening," another might be "Red Slate Peak, Morning."
But it was never a literary thing. This is terribly important, to
avoid this — I call it literary; maybe that isn't the right term. I
think from the very beginning I was relatively free of that because
after going through a certain stage I was in, in photography and
music, I realized how shallow it was.
Teiser: It not only is literary, or romantic, or whatever, but it also
reflects what the picture is like. I mean, you don't find that kind
of title on a picture that would be called "Rock and Sea."
Adams: You're right there.
Teiser: I don't know what I'm trying to say, but —
Adams: The person who would accept that philosophy of a title could not do
a Weston-approach picture, you see.
Teiser: That's what I'm trying to say.
Adams: Yes. I remember one of the criticisms that got me really worried was
James Huneker, the great music writer, critic for the Globe or New
York Times or something, but boy, was he floridl Wowl And his dis
cussions of Chopin's Sonatas and other works were memorably bad.
Now, the sonata is usually in four movements, and in the B-flat minor
Sonata of Chopin you have the "Marche Funebre," which is the Adagio,
and in which he took the mode of the funeral march. Now, actually,
it should be played with the utmost stylization, without thinking of
a funeral cortege. It's been interpreted so that people always
relate it to a funeral, but it's actually a theme, not a theme but a
structure. Otherwise you have just a funeral march.
The last movement is Presto Furioso, and is an awfully difficult
thing, with terrific surges of sound. Huneker ruins it for millions
of people by saying, "This is the night wind rushing over the graves."
You see, it immediately cuts off a whole dimension because it's so
trite. That's part of the philosophy that you have to contend with
with me. I avoid this aspect of triteness, and if I ever slip,
please, you know, take me up on it because I might make allusions
sometimes that might give you that impression. But it's very easy to
get emotional.
20
Portraiture
Teiser: Somebody with an unpracticed eye would look at Julia Margaret
Cameron's portrait of Tennyson, say, and then look at a turn-of-the-
century pictorialist portrait and find them similar. What's the
difference?
Adams: She was — I don't know if we can say she was a dichotomy, but she
exhibited a dichotomy in the sense that most of her pictures are the
most sickly, stylized, posed, Burne- Jones compositions of wan,
tubercular maidens in white drapes, and — boy, are they sentimental I
I mean, they're really Victorian! So that's part of Julia Margaret
Cameron. And they're awfully good for their time. The next step,
and the important thing, is when she got these great people to come
to her country house. (This is the story we get.) She was
apparently a very well-to-do woman, and had the equivalent of a salon,
and the people who'd come to visit would be trapped and photographed I
But what she did was so intense, and the magic in that is not just
putting somebody up in an iron brace and holding them for fifty
seconds (the poses were very long) , but developing an empathy or a
sympathy between them. So when you see the picture of Carlisle,
Herschel, or even Tennyson, there's something happening there that's
far beyond the ordinary photographs of the time — exposures of thirty
seconds or more, with the head gripped by the support. Her photo
graphs had motion, they moved, but that does not bother us. You
are aware of their great intensity.
Stieglitz did the same thing. He took portraits of [John]
Marin, and he'd believe if a person would sit relaxed for a minute
or more, something could come through that would never appear in a
snapshot. That's only a slice of time. That's another thing that
Cartier-Bresson did superbly: the anticipation of the body movements
and facial expression. And you know most candid photographs are
simply horrible, people speaking with their mouths twisted open or
showing incomplete action, etc. You have to study the person, and
you have to be speaking with him if you're doing a portrait of the
speaker. You phrase his passage or sentence, and just as he's ended
the phrase or sentence you may photograph — because at that moment his
face may have a moment of logical repose.
And Cartier-Bresson, and, again, Gene [W. Eugene] Smith, and
many other people in that field have that sense. The person-subject
does come through. But the difference between Cameron and the average
professional at the time was not that there was a romantic stage set
involved. I think there was just a very intense personal relation
ship. The subject and photographer knew each other, they were friends,
and they knew what she was trying to do. There's no resistance, and
there's no passivity in evidence.
21
Adams: Minor White made a big contribution in discussing portraiture in
the sense that it really was a stage play, a dramatic play. One
character was the subject, another character was the photographer, a
third was the camera. The interplay wasn't just between you and me,
but it was between you, the camera, and me. And sometimes this was
very vague for people to understand, but he did some very spectacular
portraits on that philosophy. You're really getting the person to
feel that they're part of the camera. That's what happens when
you're doing what's called "first person photography," when they're
looking into the lens. Most photographs you see, they're not looking
at the lens, they're looking over there or at the photographer. It's
all right to look here or there, but if there's slight indirectness
the effect is disturbing. When I talk to you and look this way at
your collar, why, it'd drive you nuts after a while. You'd think I
was, you know, ashamed, or afraid, or weak. You see the difference?
I don't know whether you can see my eyes, but now you're the camera,
and I'm looking at you. Now I'm going to focus on the tree outside.
Do you see what happens? The eyes diverge.
Teiser: Yes.
Adams: It's an extremely small point, but it's absolutely a dominant factor
in portraiture because it can be so ugly and so unhappy to have a
portrait of a person four feet from the camera whose eyes are focused
on a hundred feet or infinity. I'm talking to you, and if I had my
camera over here, these would all be crazy pictures, because it
wouldn't be far enough away. If I had the camera over there [gesture],
by accident I might get something, but of course, I wouldn't know.
So that's why the camera itself, with its single-lens reflex design,
or just the view-camera ground glass, the image (not the finder image)
is so valid. That's what's so wonderful about the new Land camera
[the SX70], the beautiful accuracy of the finder. You're seeing
exactly what the lens sees.
Teiser: This question of focus, is that a factor in the [Yousuf] Karsh
portraits?
Adams: Karsh is never very satisfactory when he has a first person. He has
the ability to make everybody look alike, because he uses a very con-
, sistent lighting without much regard for the person. I mean for mood.
The lighting, mechanically, is superb. When he photographs a profile
of somebody looking away from the camera he achieves very impressive
results. But when he has people looking almost at you, then his
portraits may go to pieces, because they're not looking at the lens,
they're looking at him, or looking a little above, or to the side.
The Hemingway picture and several others, the subjects are looking
above his head.
He has a habit — he made a picture of me at a stockholders
meeting at Polaroid several years ago, demonstrating a new big
22
Adams: format that hasn't been developed yet. He was going to take a picture
of me, and it was to be processed right there in the camera, and then
it was to be put in the printing press. This was called Project India.
It's a remarkable thing. It means that you will take a picture, wipe
the developer residue off, put it on an offset press, and you print
a hundred thousand copies. This because the print is a screen plate.
I would have simply said, "All right, take the picture but we'll
rehearse it if you want." He got so nervous we rehearsed it four or
five times. He'd never used this process before, you know, and they
had everything set: they gave him everything he needed. He'd come
in a private jet from Ottawa. I was getting awfully tired, because
I was supposed to be the subject and should look "bright." We had
worked everything out and had everything gauged to a quarter of an
inch. But when Karsh made the picture, he'd take the cable release
and look at you, and then he would do this [lifting eyes], and so
everybody sort of does this "lifting up." And it's a secret.
Everybody in his photographs has almost the same "lifting" expression.
I saw him do it with several people. He just sort of does that and
you go along too. [Laughter] He just sort of transmits a lift.
But of course, his lights are right here: they're blinding.
They glare, you know. Whew! [Laughter] And then after he did this,
here are these two thousand people out in front, and he's just white
with fear. They process this thing and out comes this picture.
"Well, that's pretty good, Karsh," Land says. "It's not your fault.
I know Adams can look better than that. Can't we do it over again?
Sure, the picture came out fine that way, but let's get a better one."
By that time Karsh was just ready to be put down the Disposall, you
know (and so was I). So finally we get the picture. "Well, that's
pretty good." And he turns it over to his assistant who washes it
off. He then puts it on this little press, and there's a print for
everyone in the audience. [Laughter] Very nice offset print. But
the sense of portraiture is that extraordinary moment of understanding
people. And a good professional portraitist is pretty much of a
psychologist. Are you a pompous businessman, are you a slightly timid
housewife, are you a dowager, are you.... And I have failed many
times with all these types!
I remember doing a portrait of Mrs. [James] Rolph, the governor's
wife, and I just expected to do her head, but, no, she had the
inaugural gown on. Well, I didn't have a studio — never had a studio
in my life with equipment to handle that, because somebody standing
against a simple wall in an inaugural gown is one of the silliest
things you can imagine. The light was all wrong. She was very
nervous, and she said, "I hope you know, I'm getting a little fleshy,
and I hope you'll do a proper amount of retouching." And I said,
"Good Lord, I never retouch anything." So, I made about ten pictures
of her, and they were perfectly horrible. They were so God-awful,
23
Adams: but I sent two proofs on. She thought one was simply lovely and
wanted to get retouched prints. So I thought, oh hell, I'd send it
to a retoucher and let somebody do it, and let them have it, because
I was obligated to get them a picture, but I had to cut the thing
down to kind of a panel. The inaugural gown, you know; I had to
print the thing down. If you do a thing like that and if you have
a studio and all kinds of lights, and you simulate a room or some
thing, you might produce an "effect." But imagine somebody in an
inaugural gown standing in front of this fireplace here, not in a
plush San Francisco home — it does not work! [Laughter]
Manzanar
Teiser: Your portraits of people in the Japanese relocation camp at Manzanar
have a great immediacy.
Adams: Yes, and that's a very interesting thing. This doesn't belong in
this section, but I'd better tell you about it.
Dorothea Lange and the group*, at the time of the exodus, when
they transported the Nisei to the camps (which was a really tragic
time), made photographs. They had a very grim sociological picture
of this event, which was a very grim event, no question about that.
Then I came along at a much later date. I was up in Yosemite and
was griping that I couldn't get anything to do in the army or navy,
and I wasn't going to just be a sergeant photographer. At first I
thought I'd have the darkroom for Steichen**, and then, well, they
got somebody else. I was just too old to do this and just too
young for something else, and I was really griping.
But Ralph Merritt, who was a great man, was the newly-appointed
director of Manzanar, and he came to see us in Yosemite. And I told
him, "I've got to do something. After all, I'm feeling like — not a
traitor — but I'm perfectly well, and I have a lot of ability along
certain lines, and I can't get in any photographic thing to do in
the defense picture. They don't want photographers." Brett Weston
was an extremely competent photographer. They put him cleaning film,
which is closer to photography than most photographers were. But if
I were a young man trained as a photographer and had joined, I'd
have been made a cook.
*working under the War Relocation Authority.
**Edward Steichen served as a captain in the navy during the war,
in charge of combat photography.
24
Adams: But these kids who'd graduated from high school, they had already
enlisted in the Signal Corps, so they were already designated.
Maybe they ended up as cooks, too, I don't know. But when I got to
Manzanar — oh, yes, let me go back.
Merritt came to Yosemite and told me, "I've got a great project
for you. Can't pay you a cent. I can put you up. I can get you
gas mileage, and I can get you tires, but I can't pay you a cent of
salary. This is something if you want to do it; we'll do everything
we can." He said, "We think we have something at Manzanar — (Hello,
Ernst!* One moment, I'm on a tape!) — we think we have something at
Manzanar. We've been able to get these people in all their
destitute, terrible condition to build a new life for themselves.
A whole new culture. They're leaving here with a very good feeling
about America. They know the exodus was a fundamental wrong, but
they said, 'This is the situation — make the best of it.' If you can
photograph that, it's a very important part of the record."
So I went down to Manzanar and photographed, oh, hundreds of
people, and practically everyone was positive. They'd rejected the
tragedy because they couldn't do anything about it. The next step
was a positive one. And I had them smiling, and cheerful, and happy,
And the photojournalists raked me up and down over the coals; you
have no idea. "Why do you have these people smiling? That's all
fake I They were oppressed, prisoners." And so I tried to explain
what really happened. Because of this adversity, about which they
could do nothing, they became a marvelous group of positive, forward-
looking people. They were the lighting candles type, you know, and
that's the way you see them. You look at this book** and you see
many who are very pleasant, and very happy, and beautiful kids, and
they really did a magnificent job of establishing a life out of
chaos. And I think that's my most important job. Although,
conventionally I should have shown them downtrodden and unhappy and
dirty — which was not true!
Teiser: You wrote the text, too?
Adams: Yes.
Teiser: As I remember, the copy I saw was poorly reproduced because of
wartime paper, and —
Adams: Oh, terribly. Tom Maloney, U.S. Camera, just thought this was one
*Ernst Bacon, composer, who had just arrived to spend the weekend.
**Born Free and Equal. New York: U.S. Camera, 1944.
25
Adams: of the greatest ever. He was so glad to publish this, to
recognize these people, and he thought American citizens would
respond and it would sell. Only about 3 percent of the bookstores
and news stands would carry it, because the Japanese were the
"enemy." They never paid any attention to the philosophy.
I must have had twenty, twenty-five letters. Some were very
touching. One man wrote me. He said, "Well, I've lost three sons
in this war, and you're glorifying our enemy." And I had to write
back and say, "Those in my book are American citizens. They were
born in this country, and their sons who were in the army would come
to see them." But their hurt was so great that there was no
reasonable solution to it. It was really quite a tragic experience
for me.
Teiser:
Adams :
I should think.
I think of what's going on in the South. This [George] Wallace
business, and the fact that "if you're a nigger, you're a nigger
forever," you know. And if he was a "Jap," whether or not he was
born in America, he's still a "Jap." The subtle thing was that the
old man that we had working for us for many years as family companion,
gardener, and cook, Harry, was an Issei, was born in Japan. He was
picked up on the second day of the war because he was a Japanese
national, and we just got a telephone call from a friend, "Harry Oye
has gone to intern camp." Well, that's expected during a war. He
had asthma. The government treated him incredibly well. He went to
hospital after hospital. He finally went to Missoula, which was the
He had the best of food to eat. He was
He would write us letters which would have
best for his asthma,
completely comfortable.
the censor's stamp on it in red: everything is fine. He comes out
to us after the war. He looks fine. He was really extremely well
treated. He immediately applies for citizenship and gets it.
So Harry Oye at the age of seventy- some thing becomes a United
States citizen, treated ten times better than the United States
citizens who were picked up by General DeWitt and moved into the
relocation camps. And that's the story that I tried to tell! We
followed the — what do you call it — Geneva compact, and prisoners of
war were magnificently treated. And, when he told us about where
he went and the doctors he had, and the care — and he was a prisoner
of war I [Laughter] The American citizen who just happened to have a
Japanese grandfather, oh no. He was put right in the internment
camp. And some places were very bad; well, not very bad, but dismal.
Manzanar had a beautiful setting. I always tried to bring in
the environment of the mountains. I knew a great many of the people
would look up at the Sierra Nevada. It was a beautiful place.
Merritt let them go out of the camp and collect rocks and helped
them get shrubs and build a Japanese garden. Just absolutely
26
Adams: beautiful. They had water running and flowers and shrines. I can
still pick out some remnants; they're still there in the desert.
Teiser: Did you ever show all those photographs?
Adams: They were shown in the Museum of Modern Art and were very severely
criticized.
Teiser: At the time?
Adams: Yes. People criticized the Museum and criticized me. It was a very
difficult thing. And even some of my liberal friends said, "You
made a mistake that time. You just got yourself in hot water." We
were talking about it. They said, '"It's not the thing to do. Japan
is the enemy and you shouldn't have done it." Nothing could be
further from the truth. So I really think I can go on record as
saying that from the social point of view that's the most important
thing I've done or can do, as far as I know. I don't know what '11
happen tomorrow. But it was a great experience.
Early Days and Scientific Concepts
Adams: Well, I'd like to go back to earlier days and people that I knew.
I'll never forget the doctor for us out there, a little woman called
Dr. [Ida B.] Cameron who lived on Twenty-fifth Avenue and practiced
homeopathy. And she would come over and see me when I was laid up
with a cold or something, and she'd have her little sugar pills
containing one billionth of a gram of something. Of course to my
uncle who was an allopath, this was like what's going on in Ireland
with Protestants and Catholics.
Homeopathy is "like cures like." Strangely enough they've
found out lately that some of this theory may work. [Samuel]
Hahnemann I believe was the man who developed it. But there were
many, many family doctors who were homeopaths, and would give these
tiny little sugar pills in a solution of alcohol with an incredibly
small amount of a certain chemical. But you got over your colds.
And they never would extend into anything serious, appendicitis, or
surgery, or anything — no kidding on that. They were really highly
trained doctors with this specific philosophy. It bordered a little
bit on the acceptance of acupuncture. Nobody could quite understand
how it worked, but it's probably the conviction up here [in the head]
that does it. But you still see the Hahnemann Hospital out by the
Children's Hospital, and Hahnemann was the father of homeopathy. It
was just a "school" of medicine. [To Ted Organ] (My friend, I know
that you are busy with prints, but could you remind Jim that I am
27
Adams: kind of dry and I'm becoming very eloquent, and this tape is very
important. A little vodka, a little ice, and a lot of water.)
Dr. Cameron had a great deal to do. She was the one we would
count on, and she was a very intelligent woman. So I had right in
the immediate neighborhood Miss Marie Butler, my piano teacher, and
Dr. Cameron (I forget her first name, it will come to me).
Then a family, Mr. and Mrs. Sattler, came next door and built a
house and cut out our view. My father when he saw the plans said,
"Can't you arrange this some way so you won't kill our view?" And,
by gosh, they did: my father, who was very broke, got a bill for
twelve thousand dollars. A demand. It was their court order because
they were going to build. Now, there's a strange thing about the
law. They were on a very steep hill. It would have cost twelve
thousand dollars to build the retaining wall, and we didn't have
anything.
My father went to a lawyer and he said, "What do I do?" He
said, "How far is your house from the property line?" He said,
"Fourteen feet." "Twelve feet is the limit. They have to hold up
the property." That two feet saved us. [Laughter] So he told Mr.
Sattler, "I'm sorry, I don't have the money and I was very worried,
but I consulted my lawyer and the lawyer says you're beyond twelve
feet." He said, "Well, I tried, but I'll hold it up. But," he said,
"maybe we can get some dirt from your property." My father said,
"Oh, yes." And we got along fine. So everything worked very well.
Teiser: But it did cut off your view?
Adams: Well, it cut off a good part of it, but still he moved back enough,
you see, which is more than most people would do.
The [Matthew A.] Littles built on finally in later years, and
cut it all off. Their name was Sattler, and she was a Christian
Science practitioner, and she tried to influence me in Christian
Science. Really, you talk about missionary work I There was always
something strange about it, because I was interested in astronomy
(through my father) and science generally, and then to be told some
thing totally unscientific was a surprise. I began to develop a
resistance, and argue — I remember this as my first experience of
being confronted with a very smart, very good mind, but it was on a
very difficult track for anyone like me to comprehend. But the
words "science" and "Christian," and "there is no such thing as evil"-
well, that was an offense to my kind of thinking in which two times
two does make four. I can remember that we had poison oak. "Poison
oak is a beautiful plant; it will not affect you." Well, I was
tremendously and sadistically impressed one day when this woman came
down with the worst case of poison oak I'd ever seen. And when I
asked her about it, she just said, "Well, I just let evil triumph."
[Laughter]
28
Adams: This was an interesting little phase, one introduction to what I
call reason and anti-reason. That was very important at the
beginning, that I had something to talk about with these people.
Then I met, later on, Orage, A.R. [Alfred Richard] Or age, who
was a disciple of [Georges Ivanovich] Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff was a
great mystical philosopher along with [Petr Dem'ianovich] Ouspensky.
I don't know whether he was related to the Gestalt theory or not.
And Orage was an extremely clever, smart man, and a good friend.
But he was absolutely scientific, you see. There was nothing phony
about him; except that sometimes he'd make some assumptions we'd have
reason to discuss.
The 1915 Fair
Adams: And then another very rewarding thing that comes back to me: the
1915 Fair [the Panama Pacific International Exposition]. My father
was very unorthodox. He took me completely out of school and
bought me a season ticket. I went practically every day to the Fair,
and I went through practically every bit of it. They even let me
demonstrate Dalton adding machines.
They had — I didn't realize it at the time — one of the greatest,
most significant shows of modern art, contemporary art, cubism and
so on, in the Palace of Fine Arts. A phenomenal show. It's been
written up lately. I do not think people realized what they had in
San Francisco at that time. Here were all kinds of geometric
structures, see, and I remember talking to a man, but I didn't
realize who he was at the time — but he was one of the great museum
people in the East; I forget his name. But there were several
people around, and I said, "I don't understand." I was kind of mild,
you know. He said, "What is it that bothers you?" I said, "There
are really no straight lines in nature." (A well-known sculptor had
made a gutter-like figuration.) Several of the people standing
there looked at me — brat, you know, talking about straight lines in
nature. Well, he could not give any answer to it . I'll never forget
this awful ten minutes in which he said, "I can't answer you on that—
there are straight lines in nature, in some cases." "Yes, I know,
there are some straight lines in crystals, and fracture planes, but
99.9 percent of nature is a fluid thing, which isn't the least bit
concerned with a straight line. There isn't a straight line on the
body." Of course I was embarrassing him because of this audience.
Well, I went over there about two weeks later and he was there,
and he said, "My boy, you put me on a very bad spot, and I've been
doing a lot of thinking. I think I could continue the argument, but
29
Adams: thank you for putting me on that spot." I'll never forget that.
"Because," he said, "you know, you did bring up something about the
difference between nature and the intellect," and that the mind sees
straight lines, like [Percival] Lowell and [Giovanni V.] Schiaperelli
saw straight lines on Mars, the "canals," which was a visual phenomenon
of disconnected points.
But I can remember these things, and reacting very strongly to
many of the paintings, and reacting very badly to the sculpture. The
paintings were abstract; you could do what you wanted with them in
your mind. But in sculpture you had a tangible thing, like a rock or
a tree. I had a terrible time with some of the sculpture.
Teiser: Have you looked at pictures of any of that art recently?
Adams: Yes. I often recognize a lot of the things I saw.
Teiser: Was there a good deal of Rodin there?
Adams: Yes, but not in this show — all this was avant-garde at that time,
early Picassos — oh, I can't remember the names. They'll come to me,
but this was largely the Dadaist group, you see.
Teiser: The sculpture of the Fair in general...
Adams: Oh, the sculpture of the Fair was God-awful. Who was the man who
did the firemen saving the child down near the cathedral in North
Beach?* Oh, the Fair itself was just filled with the most God-awful,
bad, romantic and arid sculpture imaginable. "End of the Trail,"
Stella — boy, was that daringl That was this nude — a terrible
painting, but the most popular. But the avant-garde thought this
was a very special show, one of the most significant shows ever put
together in America.
Teiser: The painting, however, what sort of painting was it?
Adams: Oh, now you've got me on names again — Picabia, Picasso —
Harroun: "Nude Descending Staircase"?
Adams: Duchamp, yes, he was in that group, I am sure. That was my first
exposure to the nonliteral contemporary art, and it made a great
impression.
[End Tape 1, Side 2]
*Haig Patigian.
30
[While the recording tape reel was being changed, Mr. Adams mentioned
his admiration for his house guest, the pianist Ernst Bacon.]
[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]
Adams: The only person who compared with Ernst Bacon who ever played here
was Victor Babin — of Vronsky and Babin, duo-pianists — he just died,
you know, two months ago — old friends. Last time they were here and
spent the weekend, we had some vodkas and reminisced and he played
Scriabin and you never had such an experience! A beautiful pianist.
I've been very fortunate in my friends.
Now, let's see. Where was I?
Teiser: You were telling about the 1915 Fair.
Adams: The 1915 Fair. Well, I saw a great many things. The organ in the
Festival Hall is the organ that is now in the auditorium in San
Francisco. It was a very good one. They've improved it, but it had
then great power. Being interested deeply in music, every noon I
went to an organ recital. And then I had some friends who managed
to let me play it a little. Then I studied organ after that.
But a very interesting story. You've heard of Tom Mooney and
the bombing?* Well, Rena Mooney was quite a fine musician. I met
her at the time. She wanted me to be her pupil. She was very
aggressive, but I didn't quite — I didn't think she was my cup of tea,
although I liked her personally. Tom Mooney worked for the Underwood
Typewriter Company as a technician. They had, I guess, one of the
greatest illusions of its time. The audience would look onto the
stage. There would be old people writing with quills. It would
gradually and beautifully fade into people with pens in their
bookkeeping shop in London. And then the picture would gradually
fade into 1890, 1900, ladies working old typewriters. And then it
would gradually fade into a new place. Well, this illusion just
fooled everybody. It was fantastic. He showed me how it was done
one time. It was a great mirror system and revolving stage. Very
advanced. And the lights would go down and the stage would move, and
the next one would come in and this one would be illuminated and
picked up in the mirrors. The mirror was the biggest glass I'd ever
seen.
We were very good friends. And imagine the shock one morning,
seeing in the paper that Thomas Mooney was accused of the bombing,
the Preparedness Day bombing. And there was his picture. This was
the guy I'd known during the Fair, and a very kind, gentle man.
*The Preparedness Day parade bombing, 22 July 1916.
31
Adams: Well, they were rather politically radical, but they didn't think
I was old enough to understand this, so they didn't talk much. But
this was a trauma. To suddenly see, for the first time in my life,
a picture on the front page of the paper, of a guy that was accused
of perpetrating that bomb outrage — it was terrible — a man that I'd
had a close association with as a good friend in my rounds of the
Fair. So that was my first brush with "reality."
Teiser: Do you remember the photography that was around the Fair?
Adams: The Camera Club show was so dreadful I looked at part of it and just
left, and the photography of the Fair, the commercial photography,
was, of course, competent but very bad — all their guide books and
things — terrible stuff. The whole Fair was the most amazing thing.
The Tower of Jewels was a geegaw, the biggest curio ever made.
And yet there were some things that were absolutely beautiful. Of
course the whole thing was a totally traditional plan. You had your
Venetian towers, you had the Alhambra Spanish courts, and the
architects really went all out.
The most impressive thing (the most curious thing I guess I can
think of) was that they had this great locomotive out on a pier,
which would generate steam — phsssh! — running on, just rotating wheels.
It would put up these tremendous clouds of steam on which colored
lights would play, and then fireworks were released back of it. Well,
the thing was a fantastic spectacle. I mean, Dufy never painted any
thing like that!
And then we knew [Bernard] Maybeck, and of course he did the
Palace of Fine Arts, and when that was lit up at the time of the
Fair, it was an extraordinary experience. A wonderful thing. At
night it was a real fairyland (I mean if you want to use that corny
term now). It was fantastic. And when they didn't take it down
along with the other buildings, Maybeck was disturbed. He said,
"This is not a permanent building I This is a fantasy I This is
supposed to go!" Oh, it was a beautiful building. To let it stand
after the Fair practically broke his heart, because in the cold
light of day, with the city around it — you know, it was a bit crazy.
And then a few years ago some guy spent six million dollars repro
ducing it! Maybeck has been rotating in his grave, I am sure.
[Laughter]
This is an interesting thing. I wrote a very strong letter to
this man and never got an answer. I said, "You're spending six
million dollars to perpetuate something which the architect was
broken-hearted wasn't terminated at the end of the Fair. The Fair
was a true Renaissance concept. Ninety percent of the Renaissance
was not permanent. It was festivals, sets made, performances. What's
32
Adams: come down from the Renaissance is mostly a lot of old monuments and
great style, but retaining that structure wasn't in the spirit of the
Renaissance. It was a very alive, transitory thing. I said, "If
you'd just taken that money and turned it over for contemporary art
and architecture, it would have been an infinitely greater balance."
But it's a monument. That guy put six million dollars into
duplicating that building. Can you imagine? It was originally built,
very well done, with a steel frame. Then it was faced with fake
travertine. I forget the name of the man who developed this, but he
could imitate any kind of marble or travertine that you wanted by
mixing clay, plaster, and color, and get the illusion — like Mrs.
Spencer* in Yosemite did a stylized fifteenth century glass window
she made of parchment. And people knew it was a derivation from
Sainte-Chapelle; that was her great theme when she was in Europe.
They looked at it and they were astounded. It is a stained glass
window, but it isn't like anything that's ever been done; it's all
parchment. But when you look at it with the lights behind it, you
can't believe that you're not looking at a perfectly gorgeous,
luminous window. That goes up every Christmas, and comes down
afterwards, and nobody wants to perpetuate it through the year.
Religious Concepts and Cemeteries
Teiser: Going back to your immediate surroundings when you were a youngster —
you were naming the people who influenced you, and people you had
known. You took Greek lessons?
Adams: I took Greek lessons from a Dr. Harriott, who I think was Canadian.
He was a minister, a total fundamentalist. And he was a terribly
good Greek teacher in the imitative sense. I mean he'd make you
write, go all through your verbs and nouns. And his pronunciation
was, of course, English. I don't think anyone knows how to pronounce
the original Greek, but this was the accepted English pronunciation.
I read a lot. I read Homer, the others, Pindar, etc., and I could
read it, by gosh. But he said, "What do you do? What literature do
you read?" He was a pompous man, very stuffy. His wife was a
little white woman, scared to death of him. He had a bristling
beard. He said, "What do you do? What is your favorite literature?"
I said, "Well, I have to confess, poetry. I just love Shelley."
"Oh — heathen]" He said, "You should be concentrating on the word of
God. Do you read the Bible?" "No, but we do have a family Bible."
(We had the births and deaths on the front page.)
*Jeanette Dyer (Mrs. Eldridge T.) Spencer.
33
Adams: Well, by that time he was just ready to pop a cork, you know. And I
said, "Well, you know, we're not a very religious family. We're
scientists. My father's interested in science, and we can't believe
this fundamental — " "Oh," he said, "this is heresy'. The world
began 4004 B.C. and," he said, "every God-fearing person must
accept that. This is the truth." And I said, "I can't — " Then,
"Dr. Harriott, how did all these fossils get in the rocks? You know,
four thousand years is not — " "Oh," he said, "my dear misguided boy,
God put them in there to tempt our faith." [Laughter] And from that
time on, my whole concept of traditional fundamentalist religion
held to a very low level. I actually heard that mythical "fact"
stated with total conviction. And I can imagine an old man with a
beard, with the kindest intention, running around in millions and
billions of rocks and poking in fossils, to tempt the faith of some
creature he invented in the very last varnish layer of the historic
column. [Laughter] But that actually happened to me! These people
are right around here today who would say the same thing.
Oh, another problem I had was with a man who was a physicist,
and he got talking about what church I belonged to, and I said, "I
don't go to church." He said, "I don't understand it," and I said,
"Well, are you a Catholic?" He said, "Oh, I'm a devout Baptist. I
actually believe in the Bible." I said, "Look, you're a physicist
and a mathematician, and you can't really believe certain things,
can you?" I forget his exact words. (This came along later.) He
said, "My dear boy, you don't understand. Faith is one thing, and
knowledge is another." And you know that was a great shock that
somebody could have all the knowledge in the world and yet have a
faith that denied it. Those things are perhaps formative things in
one's life.
This is probably a good time to say that my very dear friend
Dr. [Edwin H.] Land of Polaroid — really, a great genius in science
and technology today, and his heart is as big as his mind — he was
talking about problems, solutions, and human directions; we all have
human and political problems. And he said, "The key to the whole
thing is a clinical approach and ability in 'management1 of any
situation." In other words, if something happens, if something hits
you, you should immediately become "clinical." Don't let your
emotions take the control from you. Just analyze what's happening,
and then when you figure out what's happening, then you may begin to
manage it. You don't deny it, you don't condemn it, you just say,
"Here's the situation, and one parameter is here and another there,"
and you solve it. The instant you become emotional, resentful, or
over-respond — you have lost.
Jim Taylor: It's getting time for dinner.
Adams: All right. Tell them to hold it. We're doing fine.
34
Teiser: We'll stop whenever you like.
Adams: Now, a very interesting thing that really goes back to the twenties.
I'm not a victim of necrophilia or anything to do with death.
Cemeteries have two qualities. One is human in the sense that one
human being is putting up some kind of a stone which relates to
another human being. In many cases on that stone are carvings,
sentiments, indications, which is profoundly human and is, in a
sense, folk art. So I've always had an interest in such things.
I've got a tremendous collection of cemetery stone photographs. Dr.
Land has said, "I see so many pictures of tombstones. You come here,
I give you a new film to try, and you go to work in Laurel Hill
Cemetery!" I say, "Yes, because the stones are static. Some of them
are very beautiful and I can work thoughtfully on them."
This is a theme that affected me and affects a great many
photographers. The early gravestone carvings and sentiments are a
link — the closest link I know — to the past. And you get that
assurance in New England in the old graveyards; you really sense a
contact with past humanity, and the stones photograph beautifully.
I have one negative here that I've been working on for years.
It was a little thing from Laurel Hill Cemetery. It's gone; it's
part of Bay breakwater now. It's just a sphere, a little spirit, a
little angel leaving, floating off. Probably when it was made it
might have been corny, but it was beautiful with age and erosion.
I'm going to make a print of that if it's the last thing I do, because
it's one of the most beautiful, poignant images, and it relates so
wonderfully to so many themes. Here is the earth, the symbol of the
crescent, and the little spirit leaving it.
So to make these junctions between expression, personal feeling,
history, we can then send tentacles out to other people through art.
The human interpretation of history is just not dates and facts but,
as my friend Newhall says, "We historians don't think of the past or
present, we think of a continuous line." And now a lot of people
want to cut life into periods — everyone tries to compartment ize it:
contemporary art, new sculpture, pop art move in — in all such
compartments. Any good art historian goes around a great ellipse,
you see, right back to the pre-Egyptians. And we just came across
some pictures today of some Egyptian things in the Boston Museum.
And you look at these pictures, and they have qualities which a lot
of the contemporary artists are really trying to capture in the new
mediums.
So my interest in cemeteries is not anything to do with death,
or even the fact that the art is "art." It's a kind of a folk art,
but it has a tremendous human significance. It's just a theme which
because I suppose it stays quiet [laughter] I like. So I have a very
35
Adams: complete set of Laurel Hill Cemetery pictures in the late twenties
and thirties. That little figure — see the figure on the urn? — that
was the most beautiful gravestone there, and I went over and I
talked to the guard one day and I said, "Where's that going?" And
he said, "Oh, that's going down to the breakwater." I said, "I'd
like that. Tell me how I can buy it, anything; I want it." He
said, "Ahhh! Scram!!" But I went back the next morning and found
it had been broken up, and I pinched just this little part, which I
think remains a perfectly beautiful thing.
Now the contemporary gravestone is a horrible thing. But these
early ones were really carved. There's one stone in Utah, I think
Glendale, that was done in 1890-something by an itinerant sculptor
who went around the country when people were trying to carve
primitive stones. This one could have been done in the middle
thirties; it relates to contemporary sculpture. It's one of the
most beautiful things I've ever seen. I just hope it hasn't been
vandalized. I have several pictures of it.
Teiser: Your photographs of the sculptures in Sutro Heights —
Adams: Yes, I've a series of those.
Teiser: Are they —
Adams: Well, you see. The whole Sutro thing was a great colossus, a
benign fake. This man [Adolph Sutro] was very wealthy, and he
bought these things made of cast cemental imitations of classic
sculpture. They still had their own nostalgic value. The one I
have of a woman classically draped and looking down on Seal Rocks
is still one of my best pictures. From the point of view of art,
it's an atrocity, you know, but here again is the "nostalgia" thing
(a bad use of the term) . What that meant in history was related to
the concept of the benign ruin. Sutro really wanted to accomplish
something, and could buy anything he wanted. Sutro Baths, you know,
was his private indulgence. So with the idea that "classic" was
the "in" thing at that time, he ringed this parapet with these
statues. I remember them when they were complete. I wish to
goodness that I had been able to photograph them all. They were
of cast cement, and they didn't stand the salt air erosion, so
they weathered within relatively few years and gradually went to
pieces. But I have the torch bearer, a woman, and I had another
one that was burned up in the fire in Yosemite (unfortunately it
was the best one) .
36
Aesthetics and Ecology
Adams: All those things are so poignant because they meant so much
emotionally to me, as I was at the time exploring several parameters
of thinking and doing — into society, into history, aesthetics, and
nature. And the whole thing makes a complex, abundant, and eventful
pattern. So it's awfully hard for me to point out any one thing, you
see, and say, "This is important," because it's sure to tie in to
something else. I often went down to Bakers Beach. A beautiful fog
would be coming in, and great waves — but you talk about pollution!
The sewer for the whole Western Addition dumped off the beach, so
you had to watch your step. Nobody ever thought anything about it.
That didn't affect it any; the beach was still beautiful. I have a
picture of my mother and father and me about this big [gesture] (I
don't know who took it) sitting on the platform of the old lifesaving
station at Bakers Beach, and you know, such an image brings you back
to the particular qualities of the world as it was at the time when
it meant so many things to you.
If the beach was in that condition today it would be roped off
and covered with warning signs! You wouldn't come within a quarter
of a mile of it today. But I lived! I mean this is a very important
thing. The average human society lives in a biological slum — India,
for instance, is a prime example — and up until just recently, a half
century ago, we really lived in filth. We had garbage all over. We
didn't worry about anything. You'd go into the Sierra on a camping
trip, and there were so few people you knew the water was clear, but
even back in 1912, I think, William Colby got typhoid fever from
some high mountain stream.
In some ways we're so damned sterile today. Probably that's
one of the things that's the matter with us [laughter], that we've
achieved sterility and we're not conditioned. My son is a doctor,
and if one of the children drops something on the floor they have to
eat it. They should absorb germs, they should develop a resistance.
What is there on the floor? You walk outside, well — if there's an
epidemic, if there was something here we'd take care of it in another
way. So my whole experience at Bakers Beach all my life was that the
sewer emptied into it, and literally the whole mile — the whole coast
there — you had to watch your step, if you know what I mean. But it
didn't make any difference. That was it. The situation — what do
you do? You manage it. You watch your step.
Teiser: What you were saying of Dr. Land — *
*See p. 33.
37
Adams: Yes, Dr. Land's incredible ability getting along with people,
situations — just don't react, except to art — art and music. But you
come across a situation with people, don't feel worried about it.
Just say, "Now, what's this situation?" You'll usually find out it's
something that can be solved. Maybe it can. Maybe it's a sour
marriage over here, or somebody wants to put Mama in a retirement
home over there, usually bothersome family things. Other things
become emotional — you get mad because someone's appointed a director
of a museum, and you know he's a fake, and you think, why was he
appointed? He had something to offer, and if he offers it and
achieves it, it's all right. If he doesn't, they'll get somebody
else. Don't worry. And clinical things. Although Dr. Land is
concerned about the situation now (he thinks it's pretty bad), he is
one of the few who could point to a way out of it. There are more
than two hundred million of us, and about one million at the most
are interested in conservation and ecology. We just talk to ourselves
and we think we represent the whole world. We mismanage because we
don't realize that the vast majority of the people — the ghetto people,
the farm people — are not interested in "conservation" as we believe it
to be. Their whole history of man is taking down wilderness and
building farms. We must "manage," not just always oppose the world.
That's one of the reasons I got out of the Sierra Club. I felt
perfectly useless in the face of what I felt was irrational thinking.
Teiser: Let's stop on "irrational thinking."
Adams: Yes. [Laughing] Next time we'll really go into irrational thinking!
[End Tape 2, Side 1]
[Interview II — 13 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 2, Side 2]
Photographic Equipment
Teiser: When you took your first photographs, had you seen photographs that
you wished you could take pictures like?
Adams: No, no, I don't think so. I have to think. The family had an old
Kodak Bullseye, 3 I/ A, 3 I/A; I used to take pictures down at the
beach. They were just scenes, but there never was anything of con
sequence. And then I went to Yosemite in 1916, and I had a No. 1
Brownie and took pictures. Then I wanted to take some more pictures,
so I got a choice between a pair of two-wheeled skates or a Vest
38
Adams: Pocket Kodak, and I chose a Vest Pocket Kodak, which was probably a
momentous decision. Then I got really interested, and my cousin gave
me a 1A Speed Kodak, 2 1/4, 4 1/4. That was when Folmer & Schwing
was still part of Kodak. They made this focal plane roll film
camera, which was an exceedingly good one. There were several
cameras made, but it is still a very superior instrument. I don't
know what happened to that; I guess I turned it in.
That gave me a larger image, you know, 2 1/4, 4 1/4, in relation
to the Vest Pocket, and then I felt I really ought to do something
good size, so I got myself an old four by five Corona view camera —
kind of a classic item. It was the cheapest and best camera of its
kind then, having back swings and tilts on axis and a rising front.
The one I had was in pretty bad condition. It sagged and had to be
levelled up for almost every exposure, but I used it for a long time.
Then I got for trips a 3 1/4, 4 1/4. (nine by twelve centimeters,
actually). It was a Zeiss Mirroflex, which was a very good camera.
And then I got a 6 1/2, 8 1/2 view camera. I used plates on that,
although I did later have film holders. That's the one I did the
early Half Dome picture* with.
I graduated from that to an eight by ten Folmer view camera.
Somewhere in there I had a Deardorff that I didn't like and got rid
of it, and then I had a five by seven Linhof, early style, and in
the early 1930s I got a Zeiss Contax, one of the few 35 mm cameras
made at the time — it still remains one of the best designed cameras,
although there are others that are equal to it mechanically today.
And then I sold the Folmer view camera and got Miss Louise Boyd's
Kodak eight by ten camera, which was of aluminum, made on the same
pattern as the wooden view camera. Silliest piece of engineering.
I still have it, but it's just ridiculous to look at. But it worked
beautifully.
And then I thought I really would go "contemporary," so I had
several Zeiss Contaxes over the years. And I then got a Sinar, a
five by seven camera with four by five reducing back. That was
really a pretty good camera, but it's very heavy and it didn't have
the tilts in the right place. The tilts are on base instead of on
axis. The later system is so much quicker in adjustment. So I
finally got rid of that and got the Area-Swiss, which I use now.
In the meantime I received a camera from Hasselblad, the first
camera they made called the 1600, which had a focal plane shutter at
1/1600 of a second maximum speed, which never was over 1/800. They
changed that model to a 1/1000 shutter design. Then they developed
what they called the 500C with the Compur leaf shutters — a far more
dependable system. I've been sort of a consultant to them over the
*See p. 18 and other entries indexed under "Monolith, the Face of
Half Dome."
39
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
years. I had almost everything that I could use — I mean, an awful
lot of stuff! And then, of course, Polaroid came along, and from
the very beginning I've had Polaroid cameras, and have been a
consultant to Polaroid. I had great interest in the cameras and
materials and in the quality control of films. And then I think it's
safe to say that I was rather instrumental in urging the four by five
system into production; the system includes the adapter which holds
the single film packet which is used with the view camera, and it
enlarges the scope of the Polaroid process tremendously. While I'm
no engineer, I just kept encouraging things to be developed.
The year before last, the sale was sixteen million just on the
four by five system, this four by five back and the film designed for
it. Now they have quarter-of-a-million-dollar machines, three of
them putting the backs together, and the whole system is going very
well. It is getting an enormous amount of use in science, industry,
microscopy, and creative work. I've had a pretty general experience
with Polaroid! Then just a couple of days ago the new camera — now
a whole new system — was announced. I must say it is fantastic!
I forgot to mention some Graflexes; I've had several Graflexes
over my life. I have a 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 and two 4 by 5s.
Do you still use those?
Not as much as I'd like, but I often use them with Polaroid,
fairly valuable instruments.
They're
I forgot to mention that in there after the Mirroflex, and after
the Linhof, the first Linhof, I had two Zeiss Juels. I still have
them. They're very handsome cameras, but they don't have many
adjustments. They're more of a folding camera with a revolving back
type.
Then I have also Louise Boyd's aero camera, the five by seven
Fairchild camera that she used in her exploration of Greenland, which
is a rather extraordinary outfit. She got some very interesting
stuff with it. It's big and as heavy as sin, you know.
How did you happen to have her camera?
Oh, we've known her for a long time and she was disposing of her
equipment. I sold quite a few things for her — some very elaborate
navigation instruments. These things went rather cheap. They were
not worth much financially, but now they have historic value. And a
set of optical glass filters that are hard to come by now. Grade A
glass, about 1/2 inch thick. Absolutely flat plane.
And then, let's see. What would be the next step? Hasselblad.
I never owned a Rolleiflex. I've had several enlargers. Also the
Polaroid MP-3 camera, an industrial camera.
40
Teiser: What use do you make of that?
Adams: Well, that's really a copy camera. It's on a stand, with lights,
for copying other pictures or documents, or objects in the round.
And you can use half-tone screens and get screened images on Type 61,
all ready to go for lithography, having an offset plate go to 200-line
screen.
I have the usual bunch of tripods and accessories, finders and
lens shades and all that stuff — filters, exposure meters, etc. You'd
be surprised what you can collect in a lifetime of photography. My
studio looks like a flea market. And, the trouble is few items have
any real value, but you hate to give them up. I've got filters that
don't fit any camera, but I just hate to let them go. They're
perfectly good filters.
Teiser: How much strobe equipment have you collected?
Adams: I've done very little with artificial light. I've a ColorTran set,
I've a Graflex Stroboflash IV, and I've used it, but I just don't
like artificial light. Now these are the things that I should get
rid of, but if you do that suddenly comes some situation where you
need them.
Like last year, I photographed something and couldn't do it
outside, so I had to use my ColorTran (that's the new halogen lamps).
And I had my cars, with the big platform I transferred from car
to car, and I gave it to my former assistant as a wedding present to
put on her big car.
Photography and Technology
Teiser: After you started making pictures with those first cameras, I assume
the progression was in both your own skill and improved equipment.
Adams: At the very beginning you're just taking images at the diary level,
and I don't think you think at all about it. You see something there
and you want to make a picture of it. Now just the preservation of
what you see is one thing, but the excitement of making a picture
at the lowest level of technique is still an important factor.
The majority of people just work on that basis, and a lot of
cameras are designed to be foolproof so anybody can get a reasonably
bad picture. A lot of these cameras are automatic and you have no
controls. Polaroid has been very generous in that way of thinking
and has produced these automatic cameras with "lighter" and "darker"
controls. You do have some selection of exposure value.
41
Teiser: Do you remember at all your first consciousness of cause and effect,
of the whole span of the system that you're so very technical about
now?
Adams: I think about my picture of Half Dome, made I think about 1923 or '26.*
I got deeply interested after that and concentrated on visualization
and technique. The techniques don't do you any good at all, unless
you first visualize your picture. It isn't just exposure and
development, looking at a meter and thinking, "I give so much
exposure," etc. You have to "see" the image and must have enough
technique to know what you're doing. A man called me up today from,
I think, Ohio, and he wanted to know how to make a pinhole camera.
Teiser: [Laughter] He had to phone you for that?
Adams: Oh yes, and of course it was perfectly obvious from the beginning
he didn't know the first thing about photography. He wanted to do
color, eleven by fourteen color. Well, you have to tell him that
when you use eleven by fourteen color with a pinhole camera, that's
a problem! His exposure time would be something like two hours, and
the reciprocity effect of the film would be so distorted, as well as
the exposure values increased, that it would probably end up with a
six-hour exposure with filters — even more than that — and results
couldn't be guaranteed. Well, he hadn't thought of that, you know,
and he had the funniest ideas about the kind of depth of field you'd
get with a pinhole. If you knew the first thing about optics, you'd
know that you don't get any depth of field, you get a transmission
of pencils of light, from all parts of the subject through the
pinhole, and it's a perfectly beautiful "correct" image, but of
course it has chromatic aberration. As you extend your bellows, you
see, your image gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and your exposure
gets longer and longer and longer.
So we had about fifteen minutes of talk on that. It was his
nickel, but it was interesting to me to find out how little some
people know about photography. He said, "How do you know what
exposure to give?" I said, "Well, you have a sixty-fourth of an
inch pinhole, and you have a ten-inch focus extension of the camera,
and there you have f/640." "That small?" "I'm sorry, that's the
two times two equals four principle." [Laughter] You see, here he
was going ahead with his project and he couldn't find any data
anywhere so he calls me up. I'm not an encyclopedia, and there's
many things about pinhole photographs I don't understand, such things
as diffraction and vignetting. But you see, you have to think of
optical and chemical techniques. It's useful to understand complex
ity up to a certain point, and then it does the job that's needed in
photography in the ordinary sense. It's like an iceberg — only one
quarter above, and that's all a photographer really has to know.
But the scientist has to know the three-quarters below in order to
*"Monolith, the Face of Half Dome."
42
Adams: design lenses and make emulsions and papers and evaluate scientific
results. But we don't have to go that far. I don't have to know
the basic theory of the latent image. I console myself by saying,
"Nobody really knows much about it anyway!" but you should see some
of the purely technical works on such subjects!
Teiser: Were you reading technical papers all of the time?
Adams: I couldn't say I was reading truly technical papers. I was reading
books and papers on practical technique, and that's a distinction.
Of course in my early period, 1920s and '30s, very few knew what they
were doing. There were all kinds of contradictions and myths and
hocus-pocus going on. They were doing some of the funniest things
in photography you can imagine. And then the bad thing about
photography literature is that errors have been perpetuated. I've
been guilty of that myself, just assuming that because I see in
somebody's book that I'm pretty sure is an authority, that a certain
developer works a certain way, I repeat that, and then I'm called to
account by an advanced technologist who says, "I'm sorry, but your
statements are passe." Photography is complex and you cannot some
times define the separate actions of materials and processes. For
example, the temperature coefficient of Metol and Hydroquinone in
combination is not the same when they're singly used. And so I have
to correct that in the next edition of my book,* you see. So that's
the way it goes. Actual technical papers are something entirely
different; they relate to basic scientific investigation, and 95
percent of that is beyond me. And I have no need for it.
Teiser: Adolph Gasser said that your technical knowledge was quite profound
and that you often lost him, but of course he's not precisely that
kind of technical man either.
Adams: Oh, no. He's a very fine mechanic, but he's not a photographer.
I was at a scientific meeting, and a man from Kodak laboratories
said, "In spite of all the complex papers, your books, The Negative
and The Print,** give the only completely clear expression of the
process that there is." I said, "Well, there must be — " and he said,
"No, there's just a lot of things that you're told to do but
nobody's ever said why it works or how it works or what you can do
to control it." I said, "Well, my work just touches the surface of
technology." "Yes," he said, "but you test it far enough." You
have to make tests and trials of materials in terms of practical
photography. If you went any further than that, you'd be confusing
the general photographer.
*In the Basic Photo book series.
**In the Basic Photo series.
See below and index.
43
Teiser: How did you ever happen to make the decision (if it was your
decision) to devote so much of your time to writing that technical
series? It must have taken time away from your photography.
Adams: I guess it did. Looking back at it, I did far too much of it. It's
a matter of getting mixed up with galleries and museums, photographic
politics, you know, all those kinds of things. It does take time
and energy, but you seem to have an awful lot of it when you're
younger. I think any professional has an obligation to continue and
support his profession. You take doctors, for instance. A good
doctor has to do a lot of study as well as teaching and convention
work, writing, and reporting. Scientists' reputations really depend
pretty much on what they publish. Some scientists have got three or
four hundred papers to their credit. Dr. Land and the late Meroe
Morse, his famous chief assistant, got a coveted prize for the best
article on photo technology. I can only understand one-tenth of it!
But these things contribute hugely to the medium.
Innovations and Patents
Adams: The difficulty in industry is that pure science can be written about
whenever the nature of science is being directed to a project. But
then it becomes immediately very secret until the patents are
obtained. And then production methods remain very confidential.
You have to be a constant watchdog because once you allow a patent
to be breached in any way you're out of luck.
Teiser: Eastman does the same thing as Polaroid?
Adams: Yes, they undoubtedly do the same thing. They have a tremendous
laboratory, and they do a great deal of basic science. The problem
is they don't have much imagination. Polaroid's labs work on a
very different basis. They know they have to make money, and they
always have done extremely well, but the company as a whole doesn't
approach these programs only on finance. They approach them on
creativity. Now Land had no reason to present this camera to
scientific and technical groups other than that he wanted the
community of scientists to know what was going on. Eastman might not
do a thing like that. They'd present it to their own salesmen and
dealers. But to really go into depth the way Land did, for a
scientific group, which means not holding anything back, is remark
able. He has of course given many professional demonstrations of
various aspects of the Polaroid process.
Teiser: Will the new SX-70 camera have implications for designs of other
single-lens reflex cameras?
44
Adams: I don't know. I think it's Polaroid's concept for quite a time to
come.
Teiser: The SX-70 camera is for color only?
Adams: So far. They may have black and white some day.
Teiser: No reason there shouldn't be, is there?
Adams: No, I suppose theoretically you could say if you can do it in color
you can do it in black and white, but there's nothing sure about that,
Innovations and Aesthetic Demands
Teiser: Is there any work being done in any systems not making use of
silver?
Adams: Oh, the laboratories are spending fortunes on it.
just assume this. It's a very interesting thing:
I don't know. I
way back in the
1830s they found out that silver halide is light sensitive and
they've found nothing since then that equals itl We have what they
call Diazo; that's a dye image, pretty complicated and not permanent
and rather bad color. Very bad even in black and white because it
has to be a condensed color image. Then of course Xerox is electro
static image, which is very important. Again it's very slow and it
has a limited range.
This Polaroid print of a marble head and leaf is practically
what we call a "straight- line image." You can't make a print like
that on ordinary paper. I haven't been able to make a print to come
anywhere near it in quality. Now just why that is, is psychologic
ally hard to define.
I think there's a response, an instinctive response to creative
patterns. The highly gifted artist has that to a much greater
extent than others. It has either been developed or hasn't been.
Perhaps it is a truly instinctive quality.
Making Photographs and Printing Negatives
Adams: I'm sure if you heard some music coming out of the phonograph that
was Wagner you'd immediately recognize it, and yet you might play
Strauss or Beethoven and get the same sounds, but that isn't it, you
Adams: see. The same orchestra, the same instruments, but something else
"happens." That whole thing applies to photography in the sense of
values. The difference between a fine print and an ordinary print is
terribly hard to define; in fact you can't, in a physical sense. It
is a profound composite experience; putting everything together and
instinctively meeting internal demands.
So I think it would be hard to say just when did the casual
interest in making pictures with emphasis on subject change into an
awareness of the image as a thing in itself? You think of photography
as an analytic art. The optical image of the world is very precise,
so you've got to get the camera in a position where you get the
maximum formal arrangements that you want. Then you make all kinds of
tonal and spatial separations. That's one of the things that you
learn very quickly. Like I told you yesterday, you're sitting here,
and it doesn't bother me when I'm talking to you that the window cord
comes out of your left ear or right ear [laughter]. I move around
and control the relationship in space and time. But if I have the
lens here, the picture shows a curtain cord coming out of your right
ear, a highly unpleasant thing. This suggests the idea of following
lines without mergers or confusions. And then, what is the value of
the skin? I can measure the light reflected from your face.
Probably fifty c/ft (candles per square foot) on one side, and
fifteen c/ft^ on the other, but what does it feel like in terms of
the print? If you know the zone system, you know where you place
your values on the exposure scale of the negative, and that
automatically tells you how to expose and develop.
And then I think it is very important as a reference idea would
be to compare the negative to the composer's score and the print to
the performance. It doesn't mean what you call the photometric
equivalent. If you're getting a negative that has the same propor
tion of values as the negative, you'd be going through the photometric
equivalent sequence. That might have value in science, but it would
not have value as an expressive picture. In fact it might be
extremely unpleasant.
Teiser: Different performers have performed Bach, say, differently, so there
are variations in performance. Can you conceive of taking one of
your negatives — say that you made many years ago — and printing it
now in quite a different way than you did?
Adams: I do, I do. But it's not so different that it changes the basic
character. I might print it harder, or I might print it softer, I
might print it bigger, I can't really do anything fundamentally
different with it. I can't change the subject of it, but I can
change the interpretation. I was going through a lot of old pictures
just the other day, and I couldn't understand how I could have
printed them that way. They just looked tired. They had a small
46
Adams: density scale (the reflection density scale). So if I took the
negative and printed it so extremely different that there 'd be a
really different image, that might be questionable. Maybe it wouldn't
be.
Teiser: In this, you're both the composer and the performer yourself.
Adams: But I still would play differently, subtly differently within the
limit.
Teiser: You have printed negatives of, I think, Brady —
Adams: [Matthew B.] Brady and [Ben] Wittick and [Arnold] Genthe.
Teiser: Have you attempted to print as nearly as you could the way the
photographer printed it?
Adams: In the Genthe pictures I vastly improved it. Genthe used a terrible
paper, a thing they call Opal, had kind of a bad green tone and dull
surface. So most of his pictures are very romantic, have the turn-
of-the-century feeling, but never showed all the negative contained.
So I made the print, it was of the San Francisco before the fire. I
made it my way, and I took it down, was scared to death to show it,
and he loved it. I was afraid he might say, "Well, I don't like it
that brilliant." Then I made Genthe' s "The Street of the Gamblers,"
a fantastic thing, done in 1904 with an old Kodak, roll film.
Beautiful "anticipation." You could possibly pass it off as Arnold
Genthe or W. Eugene Smith or Henri Cartier-Bresson by the style.
But all his prints were sort of brownish green, soft, and "goofy."
As for using glossy prints — that was in earlier days only for news
paper reproduction, etc. An "art" photographer was ashamed to make
a glossy print, you know. Now we do the opposite thing. We want as
much brilliance as possible!
The Brady photographs, the photographs of the Brady group, were
informational pictures, and they were done on wet plates, and of
course, as they used the printing-out process, such were extremely
contrasty. The printing-out process is where you put a piece of
sensitive paper back of the film and expose it in strong light, and
the effect of the light reduces the silver halide in the print paper
to silver. You can see the picture building up. The printing frames
have little back trap doors you can open and see the progress of
printing. Now, as the silver builds up it acts as a shield for
further exposure. It is self-masking. As you get to the maximum
black, it takes a longer, and longer, and longer time, and in the
meantime your gray and white values come through, and you print
until you've got just the detail you want in all the values. As you
print more than required you get gray results. But a modern normal
negative printed that way would be so soft you would get very weak
47
Adams: prints. And so these wet plate negatives of very high density and
contrast, to print them I had to use A20 Number 0, the softest grade
of A20, and an extremely soft developer. I did get some prints that
were very close — simulated the originals — but any normal treatment
given would result in far too contrasty prints.
Teiser: Eastman wouldn't make you a special emulsion for this sort of thing?
Adams: Well, they could. It would probably cost five or ten thousand dollars.
Teiser: I see. [Laughter]
Adams: It's got to the point now where with certain items you have to order
a minimum of three or four hundred dollars' worth. For instance, if
I want to use a roll of paper and make a big print the size of this
door on No. 4 Kodabromide double weight glossy, I have to order about
three hundred dollars' worth. They don't stock it. They stock the
G surface and they stock something else. They have the paper, and
out of their huge rolls they'll cut you three hundred dollars' worth.
But they won't make up rolls in boxes and send them out in the country
for sale, because it has a relatively short shelf life and not much
if sold. If you keep it cool it's good for around two years, and
I've used paper ten years old by putting potassium bromide in the
developer to reduce the fog, providing it hasn't been subjected to
dampness.
Teiser: Who was the third photographer whose photographs you said you —
Adams: Ben Wittick. And then Bill Webb lives down here near us who's doing
a second book on [Adam Clark] Vroman, the excellent photographer of
the Southwest. He's having an awful time printing, because the
negatives are not normal negatives, but he's got a fine technique —
he can manage them. But you can't do exactly what they did unless
you use a printing-out paper. And you can't buy any good printing-
out paper today.
[End Tape 2, Side 2]
[Begin Tape 3, Side 1]
Photographs as Commodities
Teiser: I don't know Ben Wittick. When was he?
Adams: Oh, in the seventies, eighties, nineties,
let's say.
Teiser: Where did he photograph?
Late nineteenth century,
48
Adams: Southwest generally, to the best of my knowledge.
You see, many of the Brady group, when the Civil War was over,
went west to photograph. [Timothy H.j O'Sullivan, [William Henry]
Jackson, I think [F.H.] Bell; several others did, went into profes
sional or survey work. Of course they were all relatively young men
then, and a lot of them didn't keep up photography.
You see, Brady didn't make photographs himself. He was a
promoter and a businessman. He would contract with the photographers
for their services. Beaumont Newhall and I went through about five
thousand Brady negatives in the [National] Archives (a big set had
just been presented them) , and every negative envelope had the name
of the photographer on it. But, you see, the photographer was
seldom, if ever, given credit for all his photographs. But Matthew
Brady, Incorporated, studios was given the credit. Now when [Roy E.]
Stryker took over the photographic group at the time of the dust
bowl — that's the Farm Resettlement project history — he got his group
of superb photographers together, but they always got the credit.
That was the difference; the photographers got the credit. F.S.A.
[Farm Security Administration],* Dorothea Lange photographed for it.
They always gave full credit.
Now, we don't think that Brady intended to omit such credits,
but photography was nothing but a business at that time. And if you
did a story, you wouldn't give credit to every item that went out.
If you go to a machine shop and have a device made, it would be made
by the Blank Machine Company, and they don't name Joe Doaks, etc.,
who perhaps did the actual work. So it's a psychological approach.
Photography didn't mean anything in terms of creative art. The men
even exchanged negatives. O'Sullivan would bemoan the fact that he
didn't have something of the Southern Colorado plateau, for example,
but Jackson had, so he'd trade him one for something else.
So, photography was a kind of commodity. They only became
conscious of it as a personal and expressive art at a much later
date. Excepting a few people (very few) — Stieglitz, Cameron, [Paul]
Strand — those people maintained the integrity of the artist. I think
Vroman was probably okay. He realized what he'd done. But then on
the other hand, it was a kind of exploitation to allow the Union
Pacific to use his photographs and hand-color them. God-awful
calendars and posters and timetables that were hand-colored re
productions ad nauseam! I don't know how far I'm going afield —
Teiser: No, no. It's all within the —
*Stryker headed the photographic unit of the historical section of the
Division of Information of the Resettlement Administration, which in
1937 became the Farm Security Administration.
49
Photography and Politics
Adams: So then we had the Photo League in New York, which formed before
the war [World War II] primarily as a cinema group. After the war it
was re-formed as a still group. It was taken over by the Commies and
was put on the "red list." Many of the best photographers were un
wittingly trapped in that. I was tipped off. I was down here, and
they called me up and said, "This board is now in control of the
Commies and you better do something about it." So I called my lawyer
and he said, "Write them a letter and ask them: Are you becoming
politically inclined or aren't you? I joined as simply a photographer."
And he said, "Send a copy to the F.B.I." I didn't get any answer, so
I sent them a resignation. I said, "I joined this for photographic
purposes, not for political or ideological reasons. I don't want to
be associated with Republican, Democrat, Commie or anything. I mean
it's bad business to get all wrapped up in the political thing." I
sent that to the F.B.I, too, and the letters got me clearance quite
fast when I needed it most, because I had disclaimed any political
association. But other young people paid no attention to it at all.
One of them had a job with the government overseas and got all the
way over to London before he was investigated and sent home.
That was mostly in the awful McCarthy period, so even if you had
only read a chapter of Marx, you were a subversive. Of course, as an
American that makes you very mad. But the thing I resented was not
any fear for myself from the thing, because I knew what I believed in,
but being automatically included in the propaganda business. My best
rejoinder is now if you want me to join things — if somebody calls up
very impassioned and says, "You must write a letter to the government,"
I say, "I'm just not a push-button liberal." A lot of people say,
"Oh, sure, I'll come right out with an idea that's in favor of any
thing a Democrat would say, and any Republican is bad," and so on.
(And vice versa, I can assure you.) But it's fairly hard sometimes
to be really logical, retain a logical opinion, and so I just have
that phrase to fall back upon, "I'm not interested in being a push
button liberal."
Group f/6A
Teiser: Back to an earlier organization that you were part of and then
disbanded —
Adams: Oh, the f/64 Group, yes?
50
Teiser: Do you remember how that started?
Adams: Yes. For several years after 1930, two years anyway, I had been
talking to my friends about getting a group together and profess —
watch that cat so it doesn't get out! — you know, make sort of a
manifesto on straight photography, because the camera club people were
pretty dismal; [William] Mortensen down south [in Southern California]
was a prime example. Oh, there was some terrible stuff.
So Willard Van Dyke and a few others said, "It's a good idea;
what '11 we call it?" It was Willard who came up with "f/64." That
means a small stop, a very small stop on the lens — which [makes for]
clarity and depth, the kind of image qualities typical of Edward
Weston's work and our work. We don't enjoy any fuzzy imagery anywhere.
We had this group formed, with Edward Weston, Sonia Noskowiak,
John Paul Edwards, Alma Lavenson, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham,
Henry Swift, and myself. We had several very interesting shows, and
supported a kind of manifesto (you know, like the Dadaists); we pro
tested against the conventional misuse of the medium. Here was this
beautiful medium of photography which was being bastardized by soft-
focus lenses and paper negatives and all of the things that they used
to make the lens image look unlike a photograph. And then after a
year or so, we decided that we'd done all we could, and we'd just
repeat ourselves; it would become a cult, and Weston didn't want to
be in a cult, so we decided we'd simply disband. However, it did
create a cult, and the cult is still with us! Everybody apparently
creates a cult. Edward Weston had a cult, and I guess I've got one;
people are imitating me. But Group f/64 did have a profound influence
on making people realize that the straight photographic image could be
beautiful, and not the pictorial doctored one.
Teiser: Maybe this is the place to correct a thing that's in print. The
Gernsheim A Concise History of Photography says that Willard Van Dyke
started the f/64 Group.
Adams: Well, I would say Willard Van Dyke was instrumental, certainly a
leader. I would say (this is not boasting) I had proposed such a
group for two years. Willard Van Dyke activated it — said, "Well,
let's do it," you see, and proposed the name. That's half right, at
least. I don't think it makes much difference so long as the other
people are mentioned.
Teiser: The others were all established by that time?
Adams: Some were amateurs and some were professionals. Imogen Cunningham
was a professional; Alma Lavenson was semi-professional; Noskowiak
was professional; I was a professional; Van Dyke was quasi-
professional — he was really interested in film but running a gas
51
Adams: station to make a living, and also doing black and white photographs.
And, of course, Edward Weston was a creative-professional. Then
there was Henry Swift, the businessman, but of rare creative ability,
and John Paul Edwards, who was a former pictorialist, a businessman.
Teiser: How did you happen to let him in?
Adams: He was good.
Teiser: He was within the scope?
Adams: He was within the pattern. He was very supportive of the thing and
was doing very good photographs.
Teiser: Did you discuss "painterly" photographs?
Adams: Painterly? Oh, well, I guess that was what we were fighting. We
were fighting the idea of photographs imitating the feeling or the
looks, the appearance of other media. The straight photograph was
sneered at. There was no possibility of it being art, so earlier
photographers were always trying to add something to simulate art.
That was done with paper negatives, and texture screens, and rough
papers, and bromoils and gum prints — everything imaginable! You
just look through Caf fin's history — I'll loan it to you. Have you
seen it yet, the one the Friends of Photography gave to the members?
Caf fin's Photography As an Art?* I'm going to give you that book,
because that will show you much. This was at this difficult turn of
the century, when Stieglitz was trying to get away from the domina
tion of the Manhattan Camera Club, and a lot of these people such
as Gertrude Kasebier as well — can't think of them all. Out here
Ann Brigman did nudes and junipers at Lake Tahoe — all soft focus.
But they were very definite attempts to be creative, much more so
than the ordinary pictorialists, who were just being literary or
descriptive or making a fetish of being not sharp.** I've had people
say to me, "Now, if you only would give that a little soft focus,
do something to improve it — it's so brutally hard now." And I made
all kinds of soft-focus pictures on rough Dassonville or Wellington
papers, and I did some bromoils. I've got a bromoil over there,
where the image is recreated in ink — beautiful permanent image,
carbon black. But not sharp I
[End Tape 3, Side 1]
*Charles H. Caf fin's book, originally published in 1901, was re-
published in 1971 by Morgan & Morgan for the Friends of Photography,
Carmel.
**For more recollections of Group f/64, see mentions as indexed.
52
[Interview III — 14 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 3, Side 2]
Teiser: Yesterday we were talking about the Caff in book —
Adams: Yes. The idea of the division of photography between the "artistic"
and the straight record, which was just discussed — semantics always
seems to intrude on common sense in photography — but a documentary
record would imply an image in which there was nothing conveyed but
merely a factual record. You'd have a competent image; you may be
getting as much as possible in it, but none of it might carry any
conviction. Most of the very early photographs (many of those of
today) were very dull pictures of things. A few outstanding people
did much better. But the straight, detailed photograph — a sharp,
simple print, of course, was not considered artistic. So, the so-
called "artistic minded" photographers just attempted to imitate
painting. And there's a very hazy line between the pictorialist ,
who is not intense, is more or less an imitator, and the person who
was trying to think of photography in the "feeling" of the time,
but being very sensitive to composition and arrangement, and seeing.
Although many of their prints do not look like our sharp prints
today, there is a very definite camera "seeing" ability, and it
takes quite a lot of study to really confirm that.
This Caffin book, for instance, has some of it, I think. Of
course, some of the work is very dull, and some of it is, in a
sense, manipulated, but it is a break from painting, although they
used a lot of fancy borders and toned prints and so on. The student
of photography can observe that they weren't "seeing" the world as
the painter might see it; they were beginning to see it as
photographers.
Stieglitz
Adams: In the next ten to twenty years, Stieglitz represents the transition
from almost imitative work, imitating the spirit and the appearance
of other media, into the spirit and reasonable impression of the
photographic image.
Teiser: There are two Stieglitz photographs in the Caffin book, on page 30
and page 36, that we wondered if you'd comment upon.
Adams: The greatest body of Stieglitz's work, I guess, was done in the
eighties and nineties. You said 30 and 36? Both these were strictly
53
Adams: photographs, pure photographs, in existing light. They're night
pictures. Their effect is from what we call "existing light." In
other words, the light in this room is existing. The light outside
is existing. Even if I turn on the lights in the house, that's
existing light. The instant I come in with a lamp and direct the
lamp on the subject, we say that's "imposed lighting," really
artificial lighting in the sense of supplying or contriving
illumination. Now there's a point between those two where you add
light to either simulate or enhance the existing light. And if you
were doing this picture, say, for television and you wanted to get
the spirit of this house, you wouldn't have enough light, so in some
way you would have to direct a diffuse built-up illumination so that
the feeling approached a simulation of reality. But the chances are
they'd just come in and put a big light over there, a big light over
here, and it would be absolutely false — to the character of the
place or its illumination.
Teiser: Stieglitz's icy night picture, the earlier one, if you looked at
it quickly I suppose you'd say it was soft focus, but perhaps it's
the atmosphere. The other seems sharp.
Adams: Well, no, Stieglitz might have used soft focus. I don't know what
he did; I mean, he did everything sooner or later. But there were
lenses that were "uncorrected." Well, let's see, Weston used a
portrait lens (the name will come to me). Whereas at the larger
openings, it was slightly soft focus, when you stop down around 16
and 22, it gets sharp. The Graf Variable Anastigmat it was called.
I want to correct that: I think that that was independent of the
stop, but the soft-focus effect came by separating the elements.
In other words, you didn't get a sharp image.
Now, this does — you're quite right — this looks like a slightly
diffused image. It might also be a way of printing it, maybe a
platinum print that was on a textured paper. I've seen it, and as
I remembered, it was much sharper than the reproduction. But you
mustn't mix up sharpness and acuteness. Acuteness is an impression
of sharpness, because we have what is called a "micro-density
relationship;" that is, value-edges from light to dark are very
abrupt. Now, if you have a diffusion effect, there's a curve or
slant between the light and dark values instead of an abrupt change.
So this photograph looks as if there was low acuteness in the snow-
covered branches, but as you look down other places, you find little
dark branches that look quite sharp. So you think somewhere there's
a flare, or diffusion of light or silver. When you look over here,
you think it's much sharper, and it is. But these are reproductions
of reproductions, so it's awfully hard to tell.
Teiser: Did Stieglitz ever work in the early, pictorial idiom?
Adams: Oh yes. He did lots of things in these modes.
54
Teiser: And then did he just suddenly decide that that was not the way to go
or —
Adams: Well, let me see now. I'm not enough of an historian to make a
correct statement here, but these early works were pretty factual.
He went around the Alps, made many photographs of the Alps, and in
all of that period, his work was quite sharp, as I remember. Then
he went back to America in the 1890s and 1900s and was trying to work
at the Manhattan Camera Club, and did some things that really weren't
very sharp, and whether he did it intentionally, whether that's what
he wanted to do — just keeping up with the Joneses — I don't know.
But, nevertheless, he did make quite a break with the Manhattan Club
and other groups , and said that photography was art and could not
imitate, and then selected works which he felt were not imitations
of general work of the time.
Teiser: By the time you knew him, he was established in this?
Adams: Oh, well, he had gone through the whole period of Camera Work,
publication, and a great deal of creative work that became sharper
and sharper as time went on. Some of his later prints are very
sharp. I have a print, "City at Night" — it's on a smooth surface.
It's a very beautiful, clear photograph. He didn't care for Weston.
Stieglitz had a vastly greater warmth of tone and warmth of feeling.
Weston 's work was more intellectual, straightforward, black and white.
Teiser: You knew of Stieglitz, of course — he was well-known here on the
Coast, I presume — before you went east in 1933.
Adams: No, very little. He was known by reputation here only. He only
went as far west as Chicago once. He was a distant relative of the
Sigmund Sterns [of San Francisco],
Teiser: Oh, he was? Well,
Adams: Well, it's a complicated thing. He married I believe into the
Lehmann family, and Mrs. Stern's sister married a Lehmannf?], Charles
Lehmann, so somewhere they were second or third cousins. Charles
Lehmann was a brewer — Lehmann breweries, tremendously wealthy and
lived in New York. Mrs. Stern knew Stieglitz, and she had bought
at least one O'Keeffe,* so she gave me a letter when I went east,
a letter of introduction. Weston had a bad time with him; they
didn't get along. Stieglitz could be very, very difficult. In
fact, kind of ferociously negative at times. But that I think is
a separate story, that whole Stieglitz episode. My meeting with him
and everything.
Teiser: Would you tell it?
Adams: Most of this material is in The Eloquent Light —
*Painting by Georgia O'Keeffe.
55
Teiser: Yes.
Adams: But I went there with this letter, and it was an awful day, a rainy
April morning in 1933. Stieglitz had just moved into the American
Place on Madison Avenue, and he wasn't feeling well and was looking
very grim. So he nodded and I gave him my letter, and he opened it.
He said, "All this woman has is a lot of money, and if things go on
the way they're going now she won't even have that. What do you
want?" I was rather mad, really, in a chivalrous sense. I said,
"I came up to meet you and show you some of my work." He said,
"Well, I can't possibly do it now, but come back this afternoon
about two-thirty," and turned his back on me. So I went out in the
streets and pounded up and down Madison Avenue in the rain and got
madder and madder and madder and wanted to get the first train home.
And then I figured, "No, I came all this way to see Stieglitz; I'd
better stick it out."
So I was up there at two-thirty, and Stieglitz was sitting on
this cot, with a sore tongue — he had some kind of a circulatory
trouble, and his tongue would get sore. And he was holding his
handkerchief and talking. Finally put the handkerchief away and
then, in a most uncomfortable position, looked through my portfolio.
There was this one hard cot, and the only thing for me to sit on
was the steam radiator. I was getting gradually corrugated and
grilled on the steam radiator [laughter], and he looked all through
the work — the folios. And every time I tried to say something, he
put his hand up for silence. So we went through this thing in dead
quiet.
Then he took the portfolio and he closed it all up and tied all
three strings, and then he looked at me. And then he opened the
portfolio up again, and he went over all the prints again. He really
looked at them — slantwise to the light, saw how they were done,
mounted, etc. Well, by that time, me and the radiator were not
getting along too well and I was pacing around. So finally he tied
it up again, and he said, "Well, that's about the finest photography
I've seen in a long time. I want to compliment you." It was quite
a happy shock, and from that time on we were very good friends. But
he sure made it difficult at first.
The first moments were pretty tough, and many other people had
a similar experience. It was sort of a testing. If he didn't like
you, he didn't like you, and he had nothing to do with you — period.
If he did like you, he was fine, but he was irascible.
Teiser: Then he gave you a show.
Adams: Then in 1936 he gave me a show.
56
Teiser;
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams ?
Influences
Did he influence your work, would you say?
No. Well, what he did, you see, he affirmed a very high standard,
and opened up a very different point of view from any I'd ever known
of before. And that point of view was reinforced by his contact
with the contemporary arts. He was the one that brought many of the
greatest contemporaries to this country. Steichen would meet them
and see them in Europe, and then send examples of their work to him.
So he gave the first showing to Negro sculpture and Picasso and many
others for the first time in America — he was a very important
influence in contemporary art.
So the influence was not technical. I mean, I got my great
craft boost out of Paul Strand's negatives I saw in New Mexico
earlier. Paul Strand is, in a sense, a purer photographer than
Stieglitz. I mean, a straighter photographer if you want to use the
term. But the Stieglitz influence was a contact and an awareness of
a bigger world than I'd ever known, you see. And tying photography
in with that, of course, gave it a different stature. So, it was
a vital new experience. Both Stieglitz and Strand did have a
profound effect on my work. It would be hard to describe.
Now, I knew Weston very well; we were very close friends, and
had mutual affectionate regard. But his work never moved me, never
stirred me to do anything different. Just reaffirmed clarity. In
fact I was bothered by the emphasis on shape and form. I mean I
thought he was extracting sort of voluptuous effects — shapes — out
of things and gave them sexy undertones or overtones. He disclaimed
that most of the time. People read into it what they will. Peppers
looked like nudes, etc. And that bothered me because I thought it
was an imposition of something on the object. I didn't feel it
necessary to go that far. I think Strand felt the same way. And
I think Strand had the greatest influence on me —
You met him in New Mexico in 1930?
Yes.
What was he like, personally?
Strand? Oh, he's eighty-three now, and he's — he's a little aloof,
a little dour, moves and thinks rather slowly. I mean, he's very
deliberate, and he's a very fine artist, and — a very kind and
understanding person, indeed. [Interruption for telephone conversa
tion]
57
Teiser :
When you first met him was he well launched on his career?
well known?
Was he
Adams: Oh yes. He had his first show when he was sixteen or seventeen.
And he'd experimented with movies. He had very strong leftist
political orientations. In fact that's why he moved to France.
Couldn't get along with our particular system, although he'd
inherited quite a lot of money and seemed to take advantage of the
system, as so many people do. But he was at the Photo League and
stood up for them during this distressing political probe and was
very definitely on the "list." It was an awful thing.*
Teiser: But was he personally encouraging to you?
Adams: Yes, yes. He didn't see many of my things until much later. But he
was very reserved. Yet when my show of Manzanar Relocation Camp and
the people — the Japanese-Americans — was at the Museum of Modern Art,
he was quite visibly moved, wiping his eyes, though he wasn't saying
anything. Now whether that was because of the social implications,
the photography, or the combination, I don't know.
V. Adams: I'm going down to Point Lobos.
Adams: Look out for that road there; it's very dangerous. [To Teiser] Ex
cuse me.
Teiser: I think in Mrs. Newhall's The Eloquent Light she says you saw at
first just his negatives and admired them.
Adams: Yes. You see, if you're a photographer, your negatives sometimes
are more important to the student than prints. Now, I won't say
that for an individual picture. I mean, you might not visualize
the real print, but when you see a series of negatives and they all
have this clarity and this organization, you may become very moved.
And you realize how they could be ruined by bad printing. Anybody
who could make negatives like those was a superior photographer.
I wouldn't be able to tell just how he would print them. But I know
that the negative has the inherent great qualities. I think some
times with the negative you're more conscious of the design and
organization than you are with the print because you don't have the
subjects in positive form dominating you.
Teiser: I suppose when I ask you about influences, I'm asking for over
simplification. I mean, I'm sure you were going your own way.
*See p. 49.
58
Adams: I don't think influences are always very obvious. I think that you
never know what's going to influence you, and I've seen some students'
work that influenced me very much. I mean the student has seen the
thing in a new way, and I remember that whether I consciously use it
or not. But, I certainly was negatively affected by Mr. Mortensen,
by the pictorialists. I never was excited about Clarence White , but
lately I'm beginning to feel much better about him.
Teiser: Why?
Adams: Well, he had a very fine sense of composition but the prints were,
with a few exceptions, a bit soft and vague for my taste.
I think that's what bothered me. I was kind of a purist, and
I was feeling that a lot of these photographers saw things very well
and, like some workers in the Photo League, just made bad prints.
And you learn later that the fine print, per se, is something which
may not convey the idea. Maybe you want a hard, brutal grainy print,
like the work of Lisette Model; it's phenomenal in its way. The most
brutal black and white prints you've ever seen, and in absolute
resonance with her way of seeing her subjects. So I think it would
be very narrow to say she's not a great photographer because her
prints don't look like Weston's or mine. You know, it would be
silly — it would be impossible. I think if I were to take a Lisette
Model negative and make a rich-toned print and beautifully mounted,
it would be very apparent something was phony.
I think that in the professional sense [Anton] Bruehl strongly
influenced me, and Paul Outerbridge, Ira Martin, and the Morgans
(the Willard Morgan family), of course, for many years. But I really
can't describe, for a student to figure out, where the influences are
because, as I say, I'd go on trips with Edward and I'd see all his
work and prints, and we were the closest of friends and had great
admiration, but nothing really important happened to me with him.
I didn't change my opinion or approach at all.
Taste, Perspective, and Distortion
Teiser: In discussing photography with people whose photographs you don't
necessarily admire tremendously, do ideas come to you in an inter
change of opinion?
Adams: Oh sure. Ideas come. Sometimes I have occasions to be very
critical because of unnecessary sloppiness. The thing that bothers
me more than anything else is weakness. I don't mean what fascists
would say was weak, but just no body, namby-pamby. You know, many
59
Adams: musicians just play, and so what? Well, many of the photographs
you see are just so what? The way the photographers see, the way
they print, the way they present the prints, the way they handle
them. When I see a kid come up with a portfolio and he has a nice
print protected by a slipsheet, the chances are that the work is
good. It may not be; it may be a great shock; you might find some
awful, tasteless things. I always say, there's nothing worse than a
clear, sharp image of a fuzzy concept. [Laughter] You get a terrible
concept — it might be physically sharp, but it's just empty or in bad
taste.
Then of course you say that and somebody asks back, "Well, how
can we define taste? Can you really say that you can define what is
good taste?"
Teiser: [Laughs] Can you?
Adams: Well, you can. Now, if you say, "I refer you to art standards,"
you're saying you relate tastes in photography to tastes in painting,
and you've been saying that there shouldn't be that influence.
Teiser: It's too bad that photography wasn't invented first.
Adams: Well, of course the camera obscura was used for a long time, and we
don't know how many (I suppose it is known somewhere) old paintings
were influenced by this optical image. One of the important things
to me is that one of the first daguerreotypes in 1839, that one of
the boulevards in Paris, shows that the lens is a beautiful
instrument. It has no distortion and shows perfect definition over
the entire field. Now, why would they need a lens like that before
there was photography? And Beaumont Newhall said, "They used to
draw and project architecture on the screen. The camera obscura
would reveal the image, and then they would draw lines upon it."
They did have accurate lenses.
Teiser: Didn't landscape painters have a little gadget they carried?
Adams: The Claude Lorrain glass, a reflective device that enhanced color
relationships. I really don't know what it did. We use a viewing
filter today which changes the colors, or rather neutralizes colors —
makes what you see look more like what the panchromatic plate sees
without a filter. But the Claude Lorrain glass was both a trans
mission and a reflecting glass, I think. It would reflect and see
simplicities; a lot of detail would be gone. They'd just see mass
and body, and they'd get their composition quicker. But that was
for a certain type of painter. You see, Giotto did not have
perspective. Everything was flat, you remember, and perspective was
sometimes implied by a change of scale, but the idea of drawing
converging lines was a later development.
60
Teiser: But in photography you can't escape it.
Adams: You can't, no. Perspective is a function of distance of lens, and if
I have a 20- inch lens on a camera right here, that door is going to
be very big and the angle is very small. If I put on a 5-inch lens,
the angle is going to be larger, but the perspective will be the same.
Of course, in the large-image picture I don't get the impression of a
deep perspective because I don't see many converging lines. I only
see the lines that converge towards the center of the subject. So
long-distance pictures, made with long lenses, always look fairly
flat. Telephoto images are fairly two-dimensional.
We only see about a degree when we look at something. We have
peripheral vision of about — what is it? Forty degrees? Depends on
the individual. But when I'm looking at that door, I can see you and
I can see this window. I'm only seeing the door sharp, and I'm
seeing recognizable objects as far over as the lamp there, because
what I'm doing is moving my eyes and head. So I have the illusion
of always observing a sharp image.
In one way the eye is a very poor instrument optically, because
it has a very small field of sharp definition. But it is also an
extremely sensitive psychological instrument. It will pick up
something here and interpret it, though you might not see it "clearly."
I can't recognize you when I look in there. I know there's two
people there, but you can make the slightest motion and it will be
recorded, and I would look at you. And then I would establish by
that the reality of you and the door. And I would put the lens here,
and I'd get you and the door, and a strange thing happens: the
element of scale comes in, because I have a direct comparison between
your head and the door. Now, when I'm looking at you I only have
your head, and when I look at the door I have the door or part of it.
And I adjust immediately.
When you take the photograph, that's where your scale comes in,
and the longer focal length lens the more accurate the relative scale
becomes. In other words, you take a very distant picture of a peak,
and there's a pine tree. Well, the pine tree and the peak — you can
compare them. If you knew how big the pine tree was, you'd know how
big the peak would be. When you come up nearer with a short focal
length lens, you have near-far, the domination of the near subject,
so it's entirely out of scale. That's one of the magical things that
can happen in photography, where you get exaggeration of the scale
and feeling of depth.
We were just looking through the things I did in the Boston
Museum of Egyptian sculpture. This huge seated figure in the room,
and back of it, down the hall are little busts. Well, due to the
camera we were using and the film, I couldn't stop the lens down, so
61
Adams: the head's not diamond sharp, but still the figure was absolutely
enormous because of the reference to the optical size of the busts in
the distance. Now, if I can move down through the museum and out
across the street and photograph the same scene with a 30-inch or a
40- inch lens in the same camera, then the scale would be almost
relative, and the busts would assume their true relative size.
Teiser: TO continue that comparison with painting — this means that the
photographer is trapped by his lenses?
Adams: He's trapped by optical considerations. If he uses the single
negative and doesn't make combination pictures, he is trapped by his
lens and the camera. The key is his focal length of lenses; he has
different lenses, and he has adjustments on the camera to compensate
for focus and correcting for convergence within a small range. The
basic thing in photography — when you take your ideal position, you
first set your camera level. Of course, all this is intuitive.
You're out with a tripod and you just do that automatically before
you do anything else. And then you start moving around. But if you
just put it down carelessly and then you get a picture of, say, the
ocean with a tilting horizon — it simply shows that you have not
thought of your image .
You have the geometrical accuracy to contend with, especially
with photography of architecture. If a building is plumb vertical,
then the camera back must be parallel to it, and if not you get a
convergence, one way or the other. The same takes place in the eye,
but of course, here again we have the psychological controls — the
eye "corrects." If I were doing a picture of some architecture, say
of this room, and I was using my four by five view camera, I would
first get my camera back absolutely level if I wanted to have all of
these vertical and horizontal lines true and level. Then the lens
image normally would be cut off at the top, so I'd use the rising
front, lifting up the lens (hope the lens has coverage) to include
more of the room height. If this is not sufficient, I must tilt the
camera up, and then bring the back to parallel position. Then I
would tilt the lens to correct the focus, and if I focus on something
very close, I might have to tilt the lens further forward. I can
tilt the lens without changing the "geometry" of the image. But the
instant I tilt the back I'm changing the geometry, although I can
use the back with nonlinear subjects to correct the near-far focus.
If there aren't any straight lines, you are not aware of convergence.
Teiser: It makes painting seem easy by comparison.
Adams: Well, I don't think it is. Of course in painting you can place
elements as you want. The thing is you're free, and you get myriads
of impressions over time, and then you organize them in a creative
fashion. But painting is a synthetic medium in that sense, and
photography is analytic. Some people use multiple negatives, double
62
Adams: printing, and a lot of contemporary work employs solarization and
other special techniques. But you still have the optical image as
the base. There's nothing that you can do about that.
Of course, you can distort if you want. Some people will
distort in the enlarger. But the word "distort" is a negative term.
I mean sometimes we use tilts in the enlarger to correct for distor
tion in the negative that we couldn't correct in the camera. If we
have a slight convergence we can tilt our base board in the enlarger
and correct that convergence. But if we over-retouch or manipulate
the negative, the dividing line between good taste and bad may be
quite apparent. But again, who can really define good taste?
Teiser: Well, when you look at the photographs of a man like Weegee* —
Adams: Well, Weegee was a great clown. Weegee was an extraordinary person.
He really was a clown, and his aesthetic sense as we think of
aesthetics was practically zero. He had an uncanny news sense. He
had second-sight, premonition. He'd actually be at a place waiting
for an accident to happen, and it would I Fantastic. And then later
on he started using these distorting devices, and it all ended up
being I don't think of any importance whatsoever. His really great
pictures are the news pictures he had of tragic events. The fire
in Harlem is one, and the one of the two dowagers leaving or going
to the opera is one of the great satirical photographs.
Teiser: That's distortion of one kind.
The Photogram
Teiser: Did Moholy-Nagy use distortion, or did he — ?
Adams: I .don't know. He might have used devices, but to my knowledge he
didn't. In addition to his camera he worked with what is known as
a "photogram," which doesn't use a lens; it's a shadowgram. In
other words, he takes sensitive paper or film and he puts things on
it or over it. Some things may be solid, others translucent; some
things intensify light, and some things just cast shadow. You
perhaps expose for a short moment, and then you rearrange these
objects and make another exposure. What he's doing is getting a
quasi-abstract image without reference, you see, to the optical
image. Now, it would be possible to combine them, so you can't be
rigid about it. Pirkle Jones did some perfectly beautiful things.
*Weegee was the professional name of Arthur Fellig.
63
Adams: I think he used honey and objects on it. Honey would float over the
paper or flow between paper and glass and leave these beautiful
patterns. And they were of very fine tonal quality. Moholy-Nagy's
were usually very careless in this respect, very unspotted and blown
up big, and then he would claim that they were "constructions." But
I don't think they were. I always used to say, "Well, if you want
to do that, why don't you draw? Why don't you do what Kepes did or
Herbert Bayer or a lot of people did, really? Draw your quasi-
abstractions." But then he'll show you something where you get a
translucent glow or reflections, say, through a glass sphere — you
can't draw that, you see. So, I think the photogram isn't really
photography, it just uses photo-sensitive material, but with
beautiful results.
There was a woman here that died, Margaret Valeceritos, who
would make a negative, and then she'd put it under hot water, and the
gelatin would melt and flow, and she'd get very weird and lovely
things . Then they came out with the new synthetic emulsions and
they won't melt, so she was frantic; she couldn't follow her career
in that direction! [Laughter] I guess that's life, you know.
Nuclear Bombs and Photographic Materials
Adams: If nuclear explosives were fired in the atmosphere, photography
would be in a spot. That would be the end of it. I mean one little
nuclear device in Lake Ontario and Kodak would be out of the picture,
because you couldn't avoid the radiation specks in the sensitive
materials. And to get a clear sky would be practically impossible.
So we're keeping our fingers crossed. Peace at any price!
Teiser: Have there been any effects on photography of the Nevada blasts?
Adams: Oh yes. The big one that got away from them sent a hot cloud east
over Utah, and everybody had to go indoors at St. George. It hit a
Union Pacific freight train on its way to Los Angeles. There was a
whole car of Eastman film with a lot of x-ray film. Our doctor in
Yosemite called me up one morning and said, "I'm stuck; I'm having
a terrible time. Can you come and look and see if you can figure out
what's happening?" I came to the hospital and, gee, there were these
awful-looking spots on the film. So I said, "Let's take one out of
the box and develop it." It had the same defects. Then I looked at
it, and then I knew what it was because I'd read about it. The ray
striking the film is so powerful it desensitizes it, so there's just
a little transparent hole burnt in the emulsion — a bullet hole like
my Black Sun picture. And then the energy is dispersed sideways so
there's a halo. It looks like a doughnut, with a kind of hazy outer
64
Adams: edge. And the more powerful it is, the bigger the doughnut, and
those were all over the film. The ray went right through the
packing, and — probably penetrated that without restraint, until it
hit the foil, then it was scattered and activated, and turned from
one level of energy to another, which then affected the film.
Then that same cloud affected cornfields in the Midwest, where
there's some factories that make cartons out of cornhusks. A lot of
the crude paper that you see has everything, including cornhusks, in
it. The Kodak yellow boxes for film — a lot of them are made of that,
and some of that stuff was radioactive. DuPont had to close their
plant for a week, cut off all their air conditioning. Kodak had self-
internal cycling, and they could go ahead. Of course, long before
the time the cloud got to Rochester it was so weak there was no
danger to humans, but nevertheless, there could be some ruined film
and paper, and it got a little hairy for a while. So if you had one
big nuclear explosion, you'd have very serious trouble — although it
might not be affecting you physically at all. We apparently can
take a lot of radiation; we have background radiation to contend with
constantly. I've seen the white flashes, the cosmic ray flashes the
astronauts write about. I've seen that a lot. People always say,
"Well, that's just a capillary bursting in the retina or in the brain.
That happens to everybody." Now it's figured out that it's cosmic
ray impact on the optic nerve or back in those receptors. Just a
flash. You close your eyes and you see it when at high altitudes.
Nature Photographs; Points of View
Teiser: We were talking about the use of photography in conservation in
general, in maintaining a decent world. I guess it had better be
used in its own self-defense too, hadn't it?
Adams: Oh yes. That's important. Well, the full use of photography, I
believe, has to have some kind of a project, whether it's a business
one or a social one or just a personal series of photographs to
express what you think — I mean, a reason for doing it. Not just go
out and go "bang, bang, bang" and hope you find something you can
use.
In the conservation world, [This isl the American Earth was a rathe
heroic thing, one of the first books on the conservation theme. And
there we brought in the human theme as well as the natural. The
implication of the beauty of nature that's needed in a world so that
you want to continue to live in it. But now you find people who are
doing just countless pictures of natural details and birds and bugs
and sunsets without the human connection. And what it does is to
65
Adams: give a lot of people who know about it a certain happy confirmation —
"that's what I like too" feeling, you know. And the ghetto people
and the unfortunate classes and groups, they can't possibly understand
it. And there's a big resentment coming now among the poor of the
country and the racist groups — a resentment against spending all this
money on wilderness, which to them is just pampering thousands of
acres of nothing, when that same money should be going into housing
and better education. They have something very important there,
from the human point of view. They feel that politically or
tactically, I guess, the approaches aren't making for a balance. So
for every ten million that is put into a national park or wilderness
area, there should be an equivalent amount that's put into education
and human welfare. But then the whole thing becomes totally
ridiculous when you think they're spending enough money every day
of the [Vietnam] war to establish a national park, or clean out a
ghetto. Then you have this conflict all the time between the people
who had an early experience and were conditioned to certain things
relating to nature, and the people who were raised in cities.
We had a group of underprivileged children up at Yosemite, and
the kids became terrified and had to go home a couple of days before
they'd planned. They were away from other people, and all these big
things just scared them. So that's another subject, and a very
profound one, in a way.
[End Tape 3, Side 2]
[Begin Tape A, Side 1]
Adams: Where were we now?
Teiser: I was about to say that I was interested in the fact that you used
one of your earliest sets of photographs of the Kings River Canyon
in the interests of conservation and took them into Washington —
Adams: Oh yes, I used —
Teiser: Could you tell about that episode?
Adams: Well, I'd had a tremendous collection of pictures of the Sierra
Nevada that appeared in various Sierra Club things — in the John Muir
Trail book* — and I made some enlargements for display for congressmen.
So the work was chosen because — well, put it this way: there were
thousands, maybe millions, of pictures made, but I came along with a
creative interpretation which got over. And Cedric Wright's work
does the same thing. Quite a number of young photographers now do
*Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. Berkeley: The Archtype Press,
1938.
66
Adams: very beautiful work in the wilderness — in the mountains — which is
much more than factual. And you could take, say, all of Joe Le Conte's
pictures of the High Sierra, which are very valuable historically, and
they'd have little impact; they'd just be pictures of places and
nobody would be moved. Well, he didn't intend that they should be
"moved." It's no criticism of him; he was a mechanical engineer and
a scientist. So, his photographs were nil as interpretations; they
were invaluable records of places that he had explored and mapped.
The Sierra Nevada meant tremendous things to him. But the element of
art interpretation just simply didn't interest him.
Teiser: I was looking at Helen Le Conte's copies of the Sierra Club Bulletin.
at your earliest photographs and those of a variety of other people,
and the distinction between why you were taking them and why they
were taking them is apparent.
Adams: Well, it's a different point of view. But you see, that's the
meaning of "photography is a language." Take the English language,
and you can use it for classified ads and scientific papers and news
reporting and poems and essays, all forms using the same language.
So when you say Joe Le Conte's pictures aren't any good because they're
not creative, you are wrong. What you mean is that they don't stir you
emotionally and aesthetically, but that wasn't their function. Their
great importance is as records.
One of the great problems we have in our Friends of Photography:
our charter reads that we are to further creative photography. Well
now somebody comes in who's been over to Africa, and they've got a
lot of pictures of wildlife, and he thinks they're just something
wonderful, and he's a member, and he wants to show his pictures.
Sometimes you can tell him why you can't show them — but other times
you can't. Some people just simply can't understand. They never go
beyond the subject. Here they have an elephant, and it's a fairly
good shot of an elephant. But you know, you say, "Well, that's an
elephant" [laughs], but period! And a lot of people just have no
idea what you're talking about when you try to explain that you see
it at a very low level of imagination and a high level of factual
information.
Well, let's see — we have skipped around.
Teiser: Everything you've discussed brings up more —
Adams: Well, that's fine —
Teiser: — questions and thoughts.
67
Quality Levels and Portraits
Teiser: Maybe this is the stupidest question in the world, but I'll ask it
anyway if I may: when you first started taking photographs seriously,
who did you think was going to look at them?
Adams: That's a very good question. I don't know. I must have had an ego,
because I made a holy pest out of myself, wanting to show everybody
the pictures. So it might have been an ego motive there. I figure
that a lot of artists may have that; maybe I still have it. I think
it was largely to show where I'd been. And then there's always the
competition among photographers: you like to show them what you're
doing, and they like to show you what they're doing.
Imogen Cunningham — she's quite an extraordinary person, very
comprehensive; her world is a very rich one, and a very uneven one.
In other words, her technique would fluctuate — good and bad prints,
variable, creative. Intensity will do that. But when you stop to
think of other people, practically all do that. Stieglitz was highly
selective, and he threw away many things, so that he probably had
what appeared to be a rather low volume of work. But you don't know
how many bumps and holes there are in any career. And Strand was the
same way; he was very selective. Weston wasn't. It's difficult to
not edit Weston. [Richard, known as Dick] McGraw over here has about
eight hundred prints (made under Weston' s supervision by his sons
Brett and Cole) which he's giving to [the University of California at]
Santa Cruz. And he admits himself that there's two hundred in there
that are poor photographs, but he feels he should show the whole work.
Well, I have 27,000 negatives at least in that vault right over there,
and some are pure junk. I don't know why I'm keeping them. Some have
great historic value because they were taken in Yosemite — and no other
value at all. Others have narrative value, such as could be used as
illustrations or even advertisements. And then a certain small
percentage have aesthetic or creative value, which means it's the
work you really should present to the world.
So it's "operation wheelchair" as I call it. It means getting in
and printing and trying to make the segregation, because otherwise it's
going to be an awful job for my estate. Because things aren't really
defined very well. The dating is hopeless — and even the titling.
I have portraits of Thomas Moran, Ina Coolbrith, a fair one of
Robinson Jeffers, Albert Bender, Edward Weston, Fujita, Phyllis
Bottome, Bennie Bufano. And some of them are very good photographs.
A few others are no good at all. The one of Moran is one of the old
glass plates, completely fouled up by over-exposure and over -developed.
His white beard is just a glob, and there's nothing in the shadow
areas of the negative. But that and the Ina Coolbrith picture have a
certain aesthetic quality. So if you take those two and put them
together — early 1920s, you see — they suddenly spring into something
68
Adams:
Teiser ;
Adams:
Teiser;
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams:
out of logical life. And if you suddenly find those in a contemporary
collection, you don't know what's happening. It's like finding a
baby nipple along with a martini shaker. [Laughter] It'd be quite a
shock.
I suppose everything has to be taken in context. Those portraits
that you were listing then, and some others I remember, I have them
in my mind. I was looking recently again at the one that you made of
Carolyn Anspacher years ago — that seems to me a portrait that stops
one person in time. Although I've seen her since, that's my idea of
her.
Yes, that's one of my best things. A very noble one of [Gottardo]
Piazzoni — the painter on his scaffold. That's one of my finest.
You don't think of yourself, I suppose, as a portrait photographer.
But as I think of them — the one of Albert Bender —
With the flower?
Yes!
Well, I'm not a portraitist in the sense that I don't have a portrait
studio and haven't done portraits professionally —
Did you do those mainly because they were friends?
Part of it, yes. I just wanted to photograph them. Let's see —
Colonel [Charles Erskine Scott] Wood, Sara Bard Field, Ernst Bacon.
Sometimes people have asked for pictures. I did a recent one of
Sandor Salgo — the conductor here — a Hungarian. They wanted me to
make a donation to the [Cannel] Bach Festival, and so I donated the
portrait. And it came out quite beautifully. And that's the way
these things emerge. But I mean I never had a portrait studio as
such, because I couldn't imagine anything more difficult or uncertain
than trying to do portraits of random people. You don't have a
chance to know them. I don't want to be the Bachrach of the Monterey
Peninsula. [Laughter]
Edward [Weston] made his living largely with portraits,
were very effective. But I don't think it was his best work.
his picture of Albert Bender is superb.
I don't remember that.
Well, that's a good human image, but not a great photograph.
Some
But
69
Albert Bender
Teiser: You were going to speak about Albert Bender.
Adams: That's very complicated. I met him first at Cedric Wright's home
in Berkeley. Let's see, it was a musical evening, but Cedric said,
"Show Albert Bender some of your mountain pictures." Albert was very
much impressed and said, "Come and see me tomorrow morning, and bring
some prints." Well, I showed him some work and he said, "We have to
do a portfolio of these." It was the furthest from my thoughts. I
was still trying to be a pianist. So I said, "Let me think about it."
In two or three days I went down there again in the morning with
a big bunch. He selected a number and he said, "Grabhorn will print
it. And Jean Chambers Moore says she'll publish it, and now we've
got to sell some copies. So — how much is it going to cost?" So we
had to figure that out, and it cost quite a little, as all such
things do. I never counted my work in it; that's the way you do
these things. So he started off with five copies. Now, they were
one hundred dollars apiece, I think, which was high for those days.
Then he calls up Mrs. [Sigmund] Stern. "Top of the morning,
Rosie. How are you? Well, I've got a man in my office, and he's
got some pictures and we're going to do a portfolio, and starting it
off," he says, "I'm taking five hundred dollars."
She says, "Well, Albert, put me down for $750." "Thanks, Rosie,
that's fine." Then he calls Cora [Mrs. Marcus] Koshland. "Top of
the morning to you, Cora." Describes what he's going to do with the
portfolio — "I've put in five hundred dollars and Rosie put in $750" —
Rosalie — and she says, "Put me down for five hundred dollars, Albert.
I'd like to have the work." And in just about two hours' time on the
telephone, he'd sold much more than the cost of the portfolio.*
[Laughter]
He wasn't a rich man; he was well-to-do. He had a good
insurance business. And of course he was a bachelor. And he just
gave away a tremendous amount of things and money. But mostly in
small parcels. He never gave really large amounts — he didn't have it.
But some artist would come and show him some pictures, and Albert
would buy one, give him a hundred-dollar check and spend an hour or
so on the telephone getting contacts for him. It was that kind of
true philanthropy. I mean, he just didn't write checks, he really
helped people. He was the most generous man, by fifty times, of
anybody else I've ever known.
*Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. San Francisco: Jean
Chambers Moore, 1927. See also other references as indexed.
70
Adams: So it was this kind of patronage that really got me started. And
even during the Depression times, there was always something to do.
I did a catalogue for the de Young Memorial Museum. Bender had a
group of very handsome Chinese carvings, and we made a portfolio of
that for Mills College. I don't remember the circumstances, but I
think there were ten or twenty images in each set and they sold for
several hundred dollars apiece, and the proceeds then enabled him to
buy these marbles for the college. So, many things were done on that
basis: I'd get a fee for the job, then he would sell four or five
copies, and the difference would allow things to happen.
Commissions
Teiser: Those were the first photographs on specific commissions?
Adams: Some, yes. Now, I did the Maurice Sterne paintings for the Department
of Justice Building. He painted them in San Francisco, and I did
them at his studio at the California School of Fine Arts. It was
terribly hard getting even light on them because they were very big.
And I have a beautiful portfolio of that. I did Coloramas for Kodak
[i.e., Eastman] — big things to be shown in Grand Central Station.
And I did — let's see, Fortune magazine, general advertising commissions,
and then worked for the Yosemite people. Later on, projects would come
up like Timber Cove. And I did a whole series of pictures of Laguna
Niguel. They said they wanted to have these pictures to guide the
development. They absolutely ruined the place; it didn't guide the
development at all I
Then I did an enormous series of pictures for the University of
California of the Santa Cruz campus before there was anything
developed there. And that was very valuable because the architects
could see what certain areas on the map looked like.
Teiser: I wonder if those photographs didn't have something to do with setting
the tone of that whole campus as it is now?
Adams: Well, put it this way: it's only half what we wanted. The architec
ture is, I think, sad. Better if it had been something like Foothill
College. They should have really gone to the Maybeck feeling, where
you'd have a blending of the buildings and of the out-of-doors. But
Crown College is like a suburban housing project. Stevenson College
looks like pictures I've seen of "British Bauhaus." Very tight
little buildings. I don't know any one that really is appropriate.
And College Five is done by Hugh Stubbins who lives in New York.
It's just hideous. I mean it's an imposition right on the landscape.
Here's one of the grandest groves of redwoods standing alone anywhere,
and there's absolutely no consideration for it. They crowded it with
a wall. It's really "brutalesque."
71
Teiser :
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams:
I think I was speaking not alone of the physical development of the
buildings but of the whole spirit of the campus.
Teiser;
Adams :
Yes, that was the idea,
in the main.
We tried to keep the meadows, and succeeded
The students have seen those photographs, haven't they?
Oh yes. I have students calling me up and wanting me to protest
against something that's going in.
Tommy [Thomas D.] Church and I did the definitive paper on
style — the photographs were part of that — what the University could
represent in terms of style in relation to the natural environment.
And I just got a letter the other day saying that was still the
guiding light — although sometimes it was very difficult. This
present hideous [state] administration is really very negative to
that college idea. They want a college right in the middle of the
city in one unit. They think Santa Cruz is very "extravagant."
Well, I don't think it has cost any more, and it certainly has a
tremendous effect on students. But the plans — you can't afford to
have the expensive plans. So they're allowed so much square foot
cost, and the architects have an awful job getting these things to
work.
Now, these bedrooms in Stevenson College are the worst planned
things you've ever seen. I mean, you can hardly get into the closet
door, around the bed, because it's so small. One foot more, but —
They planned a little lintel over the entrance doorway; it had to
come out. They had some decoration, molding; that had to come out.
The Finance Committee of the Legislature, or State Senate, just
slashes the "amenities" out. They have no architectural advisors
on what can stay or go. So instead of having that little extra
something for style, it's up to the architect to do what they did
at the Bodega Marine Laboratory; the building is of prestressed
concrete, molded into beautiful designs. The building is a very
attractive thing although it's nothing but big columns of concrete.
But of course, they could afford to mold them into agreeable shapes,
if no ornament was added.
I did a book on the University of Rochester.
What was that?
A book on the university called Creative Change; it's a brochure.
And then I did a book for the Bishop National Bank of Hawaii, The
Islands of Hawaii; did that one after the one for the American
Trust Company. You remember that book — The Pageant of History in
Northern California. "Well, then the Bishop Bank wanted me to do
the Hawaiian one.
72
Adams: Then I did some work for IBM —
Teiser: What sort of work for IBM?
Adams: Oh, I just made a series to interpret the activities at the
Poughkeepsie plant. It's a very ugly, modern, beautifully functional
plant, and some of the things in it are very exciting. That picture
on the wall, of the transistor, is one; it's all out-dated now. It's
a computer world. So I got by fine there.
Then of course the big centennial project for the University of
California with Nancy Newhall [Fiat Lux] , and I'm sure I can think up
other things as I go along.
Albert Bender and His Friends
Teiser: Let's go back to Albert Bender. We were interested in Mrs. Newhall 's
description in The Eloquent Light of your first trip to New Mexico
with him. And who was Bertha Damon?
Adams: Well, Bertha Clark, who married Arthur Pope. She was quite a
literary person, a very fine writer, and a great friend of Witter
Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke. So we all went down there, you
see, and met Ella Young. Of course, she and Bender always hit it
off in fine form, because I think they had worked together in the
University of California at Berkeley before World War I. Let's see,
she's about eighty now.
Teiser: This trip was in 1927, wasn't it?
Adams: Yes. We met Ella Young and Marie Welch. And then Bertha and
Arthur Pope separated, and he married Phyllis Ackerman — the authority
on textiles — and she married Professor Damon of Brown University and
lived in the East, and apparently did very well in real estate,
developed areas with style. She did that earlier at Point Richmond
out here. Beautiful houses. She's still living, and she's a good
friend of Ernst Bacon who's here now, staying with us. (He lives in
Orinda.)
So then we met Mary Austin, too, down there.
Teiser: Oh yes. That brings up another subject, but let's stick with
Albert Bender.
Adams: I would take Albert — he didn't drive — on innumerable trips. We'd
come down here to Monterey and Carmel every so often, and see all
73
Adams: the friends — Robinson Jeffers and Johnny O'Shea and Kriley — a kind
of a circuit. Albert liked nature, as a Christmas tree with human
ornaments on it. He didn't care much for the natural scene; he just
liked fresh air and people, which is wonderful.
Then we'd go over often to Mills College with the back of the
car laden with books and things, maybe some Chinese things he'd
gotten. We went to Yosemite, and I can't tell you how many trips
in all. He'd call me up and say, "Well, Dr. Adams, are you free
today?" Sometimes I wasn't, but I would certainly make an effort
to be. And we'd get in the old car and go out. Knew somebody at
Napa — writers — and knew somebody at College of the Pacific over in
Stockton. We'd drive over and see these people and go and see
printers. And then people would come. He'd entertain. He was a
great friend of Ruth St. Denis. And I remember we drove to Los
Angeles to hear the San Francisco Symphony, and Ruth St. Denis's
group danced with it, and we took her down — she and Ted Shawn. We
drove down to Los Angeles.
I'll never forget that day. We went to an apartment for
dinner — Mrs. Guggenheim of the Guggenheim family. And this was a
whole floor in one of these Hollywood buildings, and it was very
elaborate — wow! She had gorgeous things in it. She said, "Of
course, you'll leave your car here and we'll go over in mine
because it's so difficult parking — and my people can handle it much
easier." So that was fine.
So after this very elaborate dinner we go downstairs and here's
a great big Rolls Royce, really custom-made; everything you can
think of — a huge thing. And a chauffeur and a footman. So we get
into this thing. Oh, it was beautiful, and these little cabinets!
I said, "Do you drive this car from New York every year?" (Because
she spent winters in New York.) "Oh no," she said, "I have the
exact duplicate of it back there." [Laughter] Albert Bender was
horrified, shaking his head. He always thought such great affluence
was rather silly. Mrs. Stern entertained beautifully and was always
doing something for people, but very seldom if ever would have just
a stupid social party. It would be a dinner for somebody like Diego
Rivera. And when she put on a dinner, there was probably none
better. Just great style.
And Albert Bender would have entertainment, but he didn't
drink. He was an Irish Jew. His father was a rabbi and his mother
was an Irish woman. And he came over as a boy and worked in his
cousin's insurance business. But he never drank — I don't know
whether he didn't like it or why. But he always had liquor in his
home.
74
Adams: He had an old lady housekeeper who didn't know anything about it
all. She'd cook him this disgusting-looking plate of scrambled
eggs for dinner. He'd come home after a big day and there 'd be
two pieces of toast and scrambled eggs. When he had a dinner, he'd
get somebody in. But he would have parties, and she would have
scotch and ginger ale and no ice. She'd always forget the ice.
[Laughter] So his friends gradually learned and they'd bring some
ice,, you know, and put it in a bowl. But she knew so little, she
thought ginger ale and soda were the same! Of all the horrible
concoctions in the world, it was that. So there were these funny
little lapses.
That Tibetan scroll was his — he eventually left that to us.
Teiser: Oh, hanging there.
Adams: Yes, that's handsome.
Teiser: Very. He served a function apparently in bringing artists of all
ages and kinds together.
Adams: Yes. And he was very important in the creative printing world.
Teiser: You said he got the Grabhorns to print the text of your first
portfolio.
Adams: Yes. But when it came to the Taos book [Taos Pueblo] , he asked
Nash to do it, and I had a preliminary talk with Nash.* He was going
to cover the inside with Spanish parchment sheets. He had a whole
lot of Spanish parchment sheets — music sheets. And I said, "Dr.
Nash, this book has nothing to do with Gregorian music; this is
Indian — Pueblos — Southwest." And he said, "Pueblo — Pueblo's
Spanish, isn't it?" [Laughter] I went back to Albert and I said,
"It's impossible. He wants to do something that's just impossible!"
He was an ass, I must admit — really stupid. I said, "Can't we get
Grabhorn to do it?" So Grabhorn completed it, with the paper all
made to order. Half of it was coated by Dassonville, on which I
made the prints, and the rest of it went into the text which
Grabhorn printed. But Grabhorn didn't have that big a press, so
he printed the four-page sheets (two to a side) one page at a time.
Hazel Dreis was doing the binding, but the columns did not line up,
and they couldn't be bound. I mean if she kept on folding, the
columns would tilt further and further apart. There was no way of
making the fold parallel. A very complicated thing. So that was a
terrible blow. We just had enough paper left to print it properly.
*John Henry Nash.
75
Adams: But Grabhorn* would say, "You're crazy; it's printed perfectly."
And they were beautiful pages to look at!
Albert Bender had come to Grabhorn 's studio. And Hazel laid
them out and got a ruler and a T-square. She said, "All right, now,
Grabhorn, is that straight or isn't it?" "Well, it is off, I guess.
Yes. We'll have to do it over." Well, what are you going to do
when you've got a special run of paper? There was just enough paper
to do it. I don't think there were six signatures left over.**
Then she wanted a special grain leather and she just ordered
it and never asked the price. It arrives, through customs from
Algeria or somewhere, and there's $480 due on it. I didn't have
eighty dollars. Who pays it? Albert Bender. So I tried to pay
Albert back. I went and worked and things, but he was never — he
always said, "Well, you just do your work. That's all the payment
I want." He didn't consider me a business investment. [Laughter]
And he was very, very kind. So he did give me the entree to a
whole stratum of society and cultural level in San Francisco I
never would have had otherwise.
Cedric Wright
Harroun: You said when you met him at Cedric Wright's that you were still in
the field of music?
Adams: Yes, I was still an active pianist.
Harroun: Was this a turning point then?
Adams: Well, yes. This was almost — it really was the turning point, but
I didn't know it. I tried to practice and keep up everything else
too until 1930. Well, there's a very hazy point there, because
even in 1932 I was doing accompaniments, and photography. And then
it just came to the point that I couldn't do both.
*By correspondence:
Teiser: When you talk about Grabhorn, you mean Ed, don't you?
You didn't deal with Bob [Robert], did you?
Adams: Dealings were usually with Ed, but I knew Bob quite
well.
**See also other references to Taos Pueblo as indexed.
76
Adams: Cedric Wright, a violinist, was an old friend. He was the son of
my father's lawyer. My father's lawyer was not very ethical,
unfortunately, but Cedric was one of my dearest friends. I met
him first in 1923 on a Sierra Club outing, and then we'd see him
often, and he liked the way I played and I liked the way he played.
He made some photographs too, and pretty soon he switched over,
because he had a fairly large personal income. He never had to do
anything, which seems always a curse. I will say he was very
diligent. But at an ego level — I mean he just had to do these
mountain pictures. He was very anxious always to get them out and
to get applause. He wasn't a very good violinist. His first wife
was a much better one, and I guess that's one of the reasons why
they split, because she was obviously a very superior musician.
He could have been a grand pianist — he had great big "piano" hands.
But, he tried to get quality out of his fiddle, and the intonation
wouldn't be ideal. But he had a very fine musical spirit. I mean,
he could really bring things to life, like Ernst Bacon.
So that was my friendship there, and then he got into doing
more and more portraits; finally did chiefly portrait work, except
for his summer work in the mountains, and he did very well. And
then he got older and more difficult and married a lady who really
didn't help too much and had two kids who were difficult — one was
very difficult, the other was all right. So he developed high
blood pressure and had a terrible doctor, and they didn't take care
of it, and he went a little off his bat. He had this kind of
paranoia about education and public schools. He'd write reams of
expository texts. When he finished this book, it was a foot thick.
I said, "Well, you've got to have it edited. You can't print this."
I said, "Get Nancy Newhall to do it." She boiled it down to some
really very good writing. But he wouldn't accept that at all. He
thought she was missing all the important points. I don't know
what's happened to the text of the thing. It had some very fine
passages in it — kind of Thoreau-esque. But otherwise just as
screwy as you can get.
And then he finally had a stroke and never really recovered.
Teiser: Helen Le Conte was speaking of him, saying he was a genius without
a field to express it.
Adams: Yes, that's good. He had the genius tendency, but he never
realized it. I think music was right; he was very happy in it.
But he picked the one instrument that his physique wasn't favorable
to.
77
Musicians and Artists
Adams: Now, in a sense I've got a lovely violin hand. My fingers are very
strong and light — very small. But I'm a pianist, see. I could
never get the power, the richness somebody like Ernst Bacon can get,
or my late friend Victor Babin. I suppose I'd have been an ideal
harpsichordist. It's a very important thing — we don't think of
those things often — but I didn't have the ear for the strings. I
have beautiful relative pitch but absolutely n£ absolute pitch.
Teiser: I suppose it was hard to break away from the piano. People had
encouraged you in it.
Adams: I could — I still can, if you'll pardon the conceit — produce a very
beautiful tone. I was trained in tone control and voicing. I
still amaze myself at times by the sculptural effect, which was my
basic training. It was largely impact control, and of course the
arthritis has knocked that. But it's interesting that there is a
legato and there is an impact. You can especially hear it in
fugues; I can really make the voices completely stand out, which is
much more difficult with "weight" playing, to give the full color.
The impact, touch — I had that, and it's really stayed with me all
these years. I mean I play terribly now — inaccurately — but it's
just interesting how lasting the training you sometimes get can be.
And so, up to that point, I could have gone on and I could have been
very fine in a very limited field, but when it came to doing the
greater Beethoven and Brahms and the heroic Scriabin things, why —
my fingers couldn't manage them.
Teiser: Did you realize that? Was that part of your decision?
Adams: I began to realize just part of it. But people encouraged me and
said, "No, don't worry about that. Think of Laurie [Lawrence]
Strauss." You remember him. Tenor. He sang French and German
lieder and had a very meager voice, but such style you wouldn't
believe. You still remember him. And the question is, what is
music? This man could create — he was simply wonderful. It was
something like [Vladimir] de Pachmann. I don't think de Pachmann
ever played anything very massive beyond Chopin. Farthest I got
with Scriabin that I could play was the C-sharp minor etude and
that really taxed me. I really didn't have it in my hands to do
that.
V. Adams: [Entering] How're you doing?
Adams: Pretty good I
78
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
Then of course I was very close to Sara Bard Field and Colonel
Wood — Charles Erskine Scott Wood.
How did you meet them?
With Albert — early, 1927 or '28. And of course I met Bennie Bufano.
Did all of these people in the other arts add to your creative
vision or whatever?
Oh yes, very much. Very definitely. Not that I imitated. You
couldn't do that with them. But you just had a support of your
convictions. I mean, here are people creating beauty in other
ways — Maynard Dixon, Dorothea Lange, Robert Howard, the Puccinellis-
oh gosh, I can't remember all the people.
That's Raymond Puccinelli?
Yes. I know very few of the contemporary artists.
Of these artists, I don't suppose you admired all of their work?
No — no. Some more than others. Bufano' s drawings were simply
magnificent; some of his sculpture was pretty corny. Sara Bard
Field's poetry was better than the Colonel's. [Ralph] Stackpole,
I think, is a fine sculptor; beautiful massive work. Ray Boynton
did an encaustic for the Woods, which was absolutely beautiful,
more so than his paintings.
For the Woods at their home?
Their home. An outdoor mantel. But they had not sealed the stone
and the water came through and it flaked.
And Maynard Dixon was a great man, a character. (I don't
know. You can't really remember all these things.) Piazzoni was
a great stylist; very quiet. I think I like his paintings better
even now than I did then. They looked flat to me.
Did you like some of Maynard Dixon 's work?
I liked his drawings much better than his paintings,
drawings.
Beautiful
Oh, and then another contact which was very valuable to me
was William Zorach, the painter, and his wife, Marguerite. We have
two Zorachs downstairs, one by him, one by his wife, watercolors in
Yosemite. He was there one whole summer and went on trips. He was
really marvelous — a creative thinker.
79
Adams: And then of course Diego Rivera and [Jose C.] Orozco. And many of
the printers. [Interruption to discuss a photograph with Adams's
assistant. ]
Arnold Blanch, the painter; Maurice Sterne.
Teiser: Did you talk about aesthetics with these people?
Adams: No. When you're in the art world you don't talk about aesthetics;
you just talk. The aesthetics are a by-product. They'll talk about
their experiences, they'll talk about their style. They'll see
something in your photograph that they like. You don't think about
it in terms of aesthetics as such, you see. And it's interesting,
when photographers get together they talk about papers, lenses,
chemicals, cameras — very seldom about the pictures. When painters
get together, they talk about painting — and very seldom about paints
or paint brushes. When musicians get together, they talk about
other musicians. [Laughter] They'll say, "Oh my, Rosenthal, you
know, he did that Beethoven all right. But Horowitz — somebody else —
Backhaus — " and before you know it, they're talking about "when I
was concertmaster at such and such."
You know the famous story about Mischa Elman, who was talking
to this young girl at a dinner, a beautiful young lady, and he was
describing all of his career — coming to this country, and his tours.
He could see she was getting a little bit restless, so he said, "Oh,
my dear, I'm so sorry, I'm boring you. I'm talking about nothing
but myself, and that is too much. Now let us talk about you. How
did you like my last concert?" [Laughter]
[End Tape 4, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 4, Side 2]
Adams: Through Cedric I knew Richard Buhlig. He was quite a pianist, but
he had the most colossal conceit I've ever seen. He said, "After
all, you can count the great pi-ah-nists of the world on one finguh."
[Laughter]
I met him one time in San Francisco, and it was a very gray,
foggy day, and he was exhausted, and I was going to take him on the
streetcar out to my house for supper. He sat there in the streetcar
in a very dejected way, so I kept talking. I figured I just can't
sit there like a dummy too. So I talked and talked about the
symphony and other things.
So we came home to the house, and he sat down — in this chair —
and took off his necktie and said, "Let us have silence, blessed
silence. You talk a very great deal and say ab-so-lutely nothing."
[Laughter] So that was a helpful influence. I've been thinking
80
Adams: about that; always have, you know. I just pattered along, trying
to keep him going — a gesture.
Ernst Bacon came on the scene early. And Ernst was a very
fine pianist — very well trained; great ladies' man, marvelous
person. (I hope he can hear me.) And he would play — well, he was
typical of a certain type, a kind of spectacular, ruthless playing,
you see, which overshadowed anybody else around. I couldn't play
when he was around because I played a totally different way. We
had a period there, a kind of first jealousy, I think. I was more
jealous of him, because whenever Ernst appeared, he was the magnet,
you see. Well, the thing that saved that situation was that he was
such an extremely fine musician. And he can still play a Bach-
Busoni chaconne like you never heard. So after the first couple of
years and adjustment, why, we became extremely close friends.
Mutual admiration society, but at the same time it was the first
time I'd come across this very gentlemanly but very aggressive
personality. That was another kind of competition.
My competition was always — if I felt it, well, I do the best
I can and that's that. But sometimes — wow! — it's like having a
show in a museum and in the next gallery there's somebody who has
nothing but three by four-foot prints. They might be lousy, but
they still would be impressive. [Laughter] Perhaps superficial.
But Ernst is one of the best we've got, and a great composer.
He's never been recognized. He never makes any real bid for fame,
but I think his set of songs to Emily Dickinson poems is probably
one of the greatest American works — just incredibly beautiful. He
still belongs to a generation that had "something to say." The
contemporary music to me seems to be almost mathematical efforts to
experiment with new symbols and sequences and combinations. You
get through with it and you think, "Clever, isn't it?"
I remember hearing one — I think it was in Boston. I was at a
friend's house, listening to the radio, and they couldn't wait to
hear this thing, and there was percussion and strings and two
trumpets and jew's-harp — some combination. And you know in the
cartoon "Peanuts" the bird that's talking to the dog? It's just a
genius flight of imagination to get this conversation of the little
bird; it's nothing but a series of little dots, you know. That's
what that music sounded like — rumble, rumble, rumble, squeak. Then
a pause. Then somebody taps seven times with a bow. Then there's
a tremendous, cacophonous, dissonant chord — with more rumbles, then
more squeaks. They then showed me the score of this, which wasn't
written like any music I'd seen before. There were no bars, and
all these strange symbols. We got all through it, and I said, "Well,
what happens to you when you hear that?" "Perfectly wonderful."
"Well," I said, "what happens? It is clever, but I didn't—" Well,
81
Adams: they really couldn't describe an emotional experience; it was an
intellectual experience, and therefore it was aesthetic. But you've
got to make definitions between intellectual, aesthetic, and
emotional. And great art has all of it together, and a lot of the
contemporary stuff....
Cults, Controls and Creativity
Adams: And in painting, huge paintings may be just intellectual exercises,
and I think people respond because such response is indicated in
the social structure. To be in — (quote) "i-n" — you create certain
things, like certain things. It's a multi-cult.
That same thing happens in business methods. The thing in
business now, and in industry — well, Dr. Land worked very hard to
establish what he called "peer consciousness." Everybody in the
[Polaroid] company that would be, say, at the level of the
engineers, there wouldn't be a top engineer or a bottom engineer;
there would be sort of a group of peers, which means you're equals
in that field. He didn't like the idea of them electing a chairman.
They'd have a secretary who'd just call the meetings, and they'd
appoint a chairman for the evening. They'd discuss it. And they
got by like that for a while. But it worked better with the
custodians and machine operators than it did with the intellectuals.
After about a year they had a chairman and a vice-chairman — all
that rigamarole. Became a society.
Teiser: We sometimes think of societies as something that people who have
little create for themselves.
Adams: Well, I went to this big conference the other day — the Society of
Photographic Scientists and Engineers. There's about three thousand
members, and they're all the top people in the optical and physical
and chemical laboratories. And there were about six hundred at th.is
conference. They were a little disappointed in the turnout, but
they're expensive. And they said they never had better papers, but
the papers were, to me, incomprehensible. But I felt very much "in",
you see, that's the interesting thing. I had a lot of friends. That
was pleasant. I was just in contact with a world which I know is
important and which is really back of my profession and the materials
1 use. But I don't really understand that world at all.
Teiser: Did you speak to them?
Adams: No, not this time. I did before once.
82
Teiser: When you speak to them, what do you speak about?
Adams: Well, I was asked to inject the creative point of view, refer it to
the materials, how research has helped or hindered certain materials.
My talk was on the obvious development of the films and the papers
and chemicals; their consistency is perfectly wonderful. And then
the tendency toward automatism in the cameras, which has just the
opposite effect. I mean it discourages creativity, you see.
That trouble is coming up in films now; they're making things
that are foolproof. In other words, they say they're foolproof and
a person can't make a mistake, but it means that you can't control.
Control is the whole essence of art. They are control-proof! So
it's conceivable to think that you can have — I know there are films
made that have an exposure range of one to fifteen, and the film
will automatically carry it. It'll almost always come out in one
limited scale. And that would be disastrous. It's just like if a
paint company said, "I'll put out twelve colors, period." [Laughter]
O'Keeffe feels that. She grinds her own pigment. A lot of the
paintings in New Mexico are done from the stones she's just picked
up in the desert. She gets the kind of thing she wants — directly
and perceptively I
Teiser: You can't do that with photographic materials.
Adams: No. No, you can't. But you still can control. I can under-expose,
use less exposure and more developer, and increase my scale and
texture. But the modern films only allow one-zone expansion. I
keep thinking in my mind I'll go on to another paper. There are
only two films made by Kodak that have the old thick emulsion, and
that will "expand" in prolonged development two or three times.
Now some printing papers are given new synthetic emulsions, and
they "dry down" distressingly. In other words, the print will look
perfectly beautiful in the wash water, but you can't use it when
it's dry. So there's always this problem of having to print light,
to print unpleasantly light, and then it'll dry down. Then finally
you learn just about how deep to print. But in the old days, you
could put the print up on a white thing, and it would look that way
when it was dry.
Now there's one paper called Varilour, that is just impossible.
It isn't just a matter of tone. A white surface goes gray. The
first time I had that happen to me was with a print in a portfolio,
of the little Hornitos church. It's got very subtle clapboards
showing. It's a white church but you barely see the little
clapboards. And I made the print so you just saw them, and I
thought, "Gee, that's beautiful!" I knew it was going to dry down —
hopefully just a little — so I went ahead and made the whole hundred
83
Adams: prints. Had to throw them all away. The white went down — gray, you
see. So then I had to start the next day and make a whole series of
exposures and develop them and put the exposure time, etc., control
on the back. And the one that I chose, which showed the clapboard
beautifully in the dried print, absolutely did not show it in the
wet print.
The point is, as the emulsion swells, the silver grains
separate like an expanding universe. And then the light penetrates —
does not have opposition. And then as the emulsion dries, it brings
the silver together and you see it.
Teiser: European papers have stayed pretty much the same, have they?
Adams: No. They're changing too. Agfa Brovira is probably the most
brilliant, Ilford is fine — I don't always like the surfaces. None
of them are as consistent as Kodak.
Prints; Tangible and Intangible Aspects
Adams: It's an interesting thing — the thing we have to think about is: what
do you experience when you see a print? That is, what is a print?
There's a whole series of grays, from black to white and grays in
between. Well, if you strip the emulsion off a print, which you could
do, it's a very soft image (if you look at it as a transparency).
And you wonder, "Well, how in the world could I get a good print out
of that? Isn't there some silver left on the paper?" No. The idea
is that the paper reflects 90 percent of the light falling upon it,
and you may have a 50 percent layer of silver in one part of the
image. Now, say a hundred units of light strikes the surface of the
print. Fifty percent gets through the silver and reaches the paper
(the background), and 50 percent is reflected by the paper (which
only reflects 90 percent). So 45 percent of that light is reflected
back through the 50 percent silver, which reduces it to 22 1/2
percent. So then you have that value which would be known as a
22 1/2 percent reflection density, 0.75. And that is why, you see,
printing is a very subtle thing, because the heavier the silver
deposit, the deeper and deeper the tone. And finally, with toning
I can get with selenium down to the reflection density of 2.3, which
is 1 to 200, speaking roughly. But visually it would be awfully
hard to tell the difference between a density of 2.0 or 2.2 or 2.3;
you'd have to have a bright light and put them right together.
The Polaroid is a different process and has what is called the
"linear scale." Your ordinary paper scales have the sine-curve
shape, the "S-curve," the positive curve. Now the part of that
scale which is most accurate or at least in proportion, is what they
84
Adams: call the straight-line section. But the whites and the blacks belong
in the toe and the shoulder, and they are disproportionate. They can
cause you all kinds of aesthetic upsets, even though you can't
describe it; you can't be fully aware of it, but it's there. The
Polaroid has a long straight-line scale, so the mind unconsciously
sees in the Polaroid print a progression of values which seems much
more agreeable.
Look at that picture over there, the marble head and the leaf —
see it on the wall? — I can't make a print like that with a conven
tional paper. I've got a good negative of it, as well as a Polaroid
print. I can't make as good a print. I can't get that luminosity,
because in the areas that are most subtle I can't get the
proportionate scale. In that and the auto-masking process, which
is equivalent to the old printing in sunlight, you do have a
continuous line. It's not an obvious sine-curve shape.
There's an article out now trying to rationalize and put it
almost on a computer basis. What is the character of Mozart, or
Beethoven, or Schubert? What do you get looking at certain painters?
And they've made these tests — certain responses on a pressure basis.
Very complicated thing, and it just draws a curve. They give me a
test, perhaps, and I would respond to certain things, and they'd put
that curve on file, and take your test. And the strange thing is
that they've found that it doesn't make any difference who you are;
your curve in response to Mozart is typical, and it's quite different
from your curve in response to Beethoven. The response is not
basically individual; there's something in the aesthetics, something
in the music pattern that controls it. And the same with the
photograph. Why do you look at one print by a sensitive printer and
the same subject printed by a good but unimaginative darkroom man,
a technician, and respond differently? The difference might be such
you'd think it was not the same picture. And yet if you put it in
the reflection densitometer, you might get almost the same scale.
It's a very subtle thing. So that's part of my approach in teaching,
and it is going to be more so in writing now. It's a kind of a
summation of experience. But to make it highly valid, I really
should work through a scientist. If I'm going to talk about values
in any way, I ought to double check, you see, so I'm just not
transcribing my own symbols. It would have to be something that's
understood.
Teiser: Well, you mean you have to translate subjective judgments into
objective?
Adams: Have to do it some way, because if I talk about a print — like this
print of Half Dome ["Moon and Half Dome"], this big one — I must say
that I can make it in varying ways. If I go light to a certain
point, it becomes weak, so I tear it up. If I go dark to a certain
85
Adams: point, it becomes hard and heavy, so I tear it up. But in between
is quite a range of difference, and some levels are acceptable.
Now, what is that range? It's the intangible thing that makes it
art instead of record.
Teiser: When we were speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Spencer* last week, 1 asked,
"Do you think Mr. Adams's work has changed over the years you've
known him?" Mr. Spencer said, yes, he thought a little, in that the
line had become sharper. And he was showing us a print of Half Dome
with the moon — that same photograph — as an example of what he
thought your work had come to. He admired it greatly. And he
seemed to think that you would not have made that photograph in that
way earlier.
Adams: He's right. He's an extremely perceptive man — both of them can
really talk intelligently about aesthetics. It's a very rare thing—
and they are rare people. They can -talk and analyze things in the
most extraordinary way, rather impersonal and very delicate. Of
course, she's a great expert in stained glass — antique glass — one of
the top people. And to have her talk about these significant slight
differences. And it isn't just a matter of different glass, it's
just that intangible multiple quality of color and value. They're
always amazed that I like Rouault, because most of Rouault's work is
related to the stained glass appearance, you know, with the black
separating lines. I never thought of it that way, you see. I just
liked these beautiful blocks of color. And, Mrs. Spencer said,
"Well, do you know that Rouault's paintings superficially look like
stained glass." And it suddenly occurred to me, "My gosh, they do,
don't they?" They do and they don't, but they do enough so you can
think of it.
And then, what is the function of glass? Why all these little
shapes? Then you take a flow of glass, of shape, and you see that
each one of these shapes has a dynamic relationship to the next one,
and that will lift your eyes — move your eyes. It's a very subtle
thing. You just don't put about random globs of glass. The shapes
are all felt — like mosaics. Gerry Sharpe, who was quite a fine
photographer — she unfortunately died early — she worked for us for
quite a while and she did that mosaic table, which is an extremely
sensitive thing. I forget who she worked with — Louisa Jenkins or
somebody. That's the first and only one she did. But there are
very subtle juxtapositions of shapes and values therein. They flow.
It's very hard to describe.
In photography, if I can say it, I think my work has that flow,
and I think that's what makes it have a certain appeal. It's what
all creative photographers must have, because people do respond to
more than fact. And I guess I really sell more prints than anyone,
and sell them to a quite varied audience. So I know there's a
response somewhere. Weston didn't sell too much while alive; he
*Eldridge T. and Jeanette Dyer Spencer.
86
Adams: surely sells now. People are paying fantastic prices for remaining
prints that appear every once in a while. But he sold to a rather
limited audience, and didn't sell very many. Some people with means
would buy a hundred prints for a collection of an art gallery or a
museum. And that was fine; it would keep him going. But the
individual prints were not acquired as they should have been.
Now, of course, I think all the time, probably a lot of my
pictures are sold because of the subject. But it's the subject plus.
A literal picture of the moon and Half Dome would almost have to be
very unpleasant. "Gee, there's the moon, Bud, look!" [Laughs] That's
about the end of it.
Teiser: Do you know we've kept you talking for two hours?
Adams: Yes. I've got to go to a party, then out to dinner. I am a little
bit thought out.
[End Tape 4, Side 2]
87
[Interview IV — 19 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 5, Side 1]
The Group f/64 Exhibit
Adams: This time you wanted more f/64.
Teiser: Well, yes. We'll probably keep coming back to things you've mentioned
and ask you more about them. The f/64 group — I'm sure you're sick to
death of being asked about it.
Adams: No, no.
Teiser: We ran down two articles; one of them is just a notice. Shall I
read them to you?
Adams : Yes .
Teiser: From the San Francisco Chronicle, an unsigned article of November 27,
1932 — the end of a review of an exhibit of paintings.
"Another new exhibit at the de Young Museum
comprises photographs by members and guests of the
Group f/64. There is a beautiful work on view"
(that is a typo, I guess) "although the promise
of novelty suggested in the name of the organiza
tion that sponsors the exhibition is not carried
out."
Adams: I don't understand what they mean by that.
Teiser: [Continuing] "These photographers, like other talented
brethren of the lens, are admirable portrait
artists, imaginative creators of abstract patterns,
romanticists who look for charm in boats, in
scenery, in grand landscape, and in every small
growing thing that is nourished at the bottom of
Mother Earth.
"Exhibitors include--"
Adams: Well, that's more favorable than a lot we had. [Laughter] It's
funny. I don't remember that at all.
They didn't know how to write about photography then, you know.
Just didn't know what to say. They thought some photography was
88
Adams: imitating abstract art. I don't call it "abstract;" I call it
"extract." A photograph is an extract, unless you go to a photogram.
But using a lens, you can't really abstract — you can fuse and
duplicate and double print, but you really can't abstract like a
painter can, you see. So I think the word "extract" makes a little
more sense. It's very personal; I think it'll never get in the
dictionary. [Laughter] But an extract is to get the essence of
something — it is of something. And the image of the lens is of
something. It's not just production up here [in the head],
Teiser: I suppose the distinction that most people make is that if they
look at it and can't immediately tell what it is, it's abstract.
Is that it?
Adams: Well, then you have abstract expressionism —
Teiser: No, I mean in a photographic sense only.
Adams: Photographs. Well, in a lot of things that Weston did, he had a
great sense of form. But people kept reading into this, you see,
the constructivist idea of the painter. When they see the photograph,
they think of it as something the photographer really did — in produc
ing these curves and shapes. But all a photographer could do would
be to select and enhance what he was selecting by the photographic
technique, by his own approach. It's pretty tricky. It gets into
semantics.
Teiser: We were looking at a photograph of yours — I can't remember in what
volume now — and on the opposite page was a photograph of Edward
Weston' s. The subject was the same — rocks, close up. Your photograph
was, to me at least, immediately recognizable and his — if I hadn't
seen others, I would have had to puzzle over it, and maybe I would
never have discovered it. Would one really know that it was rocks
along the sea?
Adams: Well, it's awfully hard to qualify those things because the emphasis
in Edward Weston 's mind was not as much on nature as mine was. I
mean, Weston was a universal person. He'd take an egg beater — of
course I did too — but he'd take a portrait or he'd take anything that
he saw that would comprise a statement — through which he could say
something. Now, these words "say something" are very tricky, because
you're not really saying, you're observing and transmitting and
clarifying. I don't know; the words are almost hopeless. We use the
word "visualization" when we see the print in our mind's eye. Well,
we really don't. We see the image. We think of the edges, we think
of the textures, we think of all that is appropriate. And then we
have to look in the ground glass and see if we've really arranged the
thing as we wish, and if we're watching our edges and if we're
watching our confusions and mergers and all the little things.
89
Adams: It's awfully hard to say. In other words, I'm looking at
you here — I see a picture. If I were a painter, I wouldn't
have any problem at all because I could synthesize everything I
see around here. But through the lens from this point of view,
the sofa's cutting your neck right off under the ear, and the
scene outside [through the window behind] is hopelessly confusing.
You know, there are so many things, it would not make a good photo
graph. Now, I could go "click," you see, and I could get what a
lot of people call just a spontaneous image. But that's not a
communicative image. Not necessarily. Cartier-Bresson might be
able to do it, but he wouldn't just sit here. He would move to a
place where he would get you at the optimum advantage. The difference
between a man like Cartier-Bresson and a snap shooter or a person
who's, well, it's about the same family as the cinema verite — just
walk right into a group and you're part of it. People forget that
there's nothing duller than a sequence in motion. It's the editing
that makes the movies the great thing. Well, it has to be there to
begin with.
Teiser: Have you seen a Warhol movie?
Adams: I haven't. [Laughter] I hear it's pretty wild.
Teiser: It must seem to go on for several days at a time.
Adams: Well, it's like pop art. For the lack of anything else to occupy
their spirits, they get a can of Campbell's soup. Then they do a
very bad picture, which some ordinary signboard artist would be
ashamed of. And that gets six thousand dollars for a museum wall.
[Laughter] I saw a pop art show in the East and I was aghast. It
was the crudest, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I tried to
figure it out. Really a can of Campbell's soup and not very well
rendered I And huge, you know. Of course now they're painting
pictures so big that galleries are being taxed to show them, let
alone get them in the museum. Like five bands of varying shades of
black. The other kind is when they start at the top with wet paint
and let it dribble down, and let it come down out of the frame and
out on the floor. I saw one painting that was done right in the
museum, and that floor was part of the composition. As the paint
dripped on the floor, it was all part of it. They call it the
"mustique." [Laughter]
Teiser: Back to Group f/64 — this one is a real review, I guess, as reviews
went. This is by a man named Julius Craven, writing in The Argonaut,
December 2, 1932. Did you know him?
Adams: Oh yes, yes. He was pretty good.
Teiser: [Reading] "For the benefit of those who may be as
ignorant of cameras and camera craft as we are,
if there are any such, we may as well begin by
explaining that 'Group f.64,' [sic] a group of
90
Teiser: photographers which is now exhibiting. . .takes its name
from the smallest stop on a camera lens. When the f.64
stop is used in making an exposure, it's called 'stopping
down' or 'sharp focusing.' And sharp focusing happens
to be the vogue just now in 'artistic' photography...."
Adams: I think this is a point, if I may say it: The lens is sharp, if it's
wide open, on the focal plane, but "stopping down" gives depth so you
have "sharpness" on many planes. And the f/64 is the smallest stop
on the conventional big twelve- inch lens. F/16 might be the smallest
on a miniature lens and a process lens may be over f/200. So f/64 is
a symbol — it means depth more than sharpness. (Pardon me for inter
jecting this, but these are relevant ideas.)
Teiser: But by 1932 was it a "vogue" in artistic photography, as he says?
Adams : No , I think what he was saying there was that we were daring to enter
the domain of the arts.
Teiser: [Reading] "The membership of the group is comprised of..." (and lists
them all). "You might say that these are the master-
photographers of California. However, their current
exhibition includes prints by an additional (invited)
group of four, namely, Preston Holder, Consuela [Consuelo]
Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, and Brett Weston. And this group
might also be called master-photographers. Anyway, be
that as it may, together they are offering an excellent
exhibition of photographs.
"Photography is one of the few crafts that has
advanced during the machine age. This may be partly
due to some of the inventions pertaining to it. But
it is probably largely because photography has come
to be recognized as being closely akin to, if not
actually to overlap conventional creative art. The
pictorial photographer of today must be a capable
artist (culturally, instinctively, mentally), as well
as a highly trained technician. He is not only the man
behind the camera, but the brains inside it, as well."
Adams: "Pictorial" equals amateur, weak P.S.A. stuff!
Teiser: [Reading] "There are many outstandingly beautiful prints in the show."
Shall I read you some of the ones he mentions?
Adams: Yes, fine. I think that's pretty good what he said, for the times.
With no knowledge of photography, no exposure to photography, that's
very good comment.
Teiser: [Reading] "There are many outstandingly beautiful prints in the show.
91
Teiser: Imogen Cunningham's studies of plant forms; Ansel Adams's
fine studies of Piazzoni at work on his murals for the
Public Library; Cunsuelo Kanaga's four exceptionally
fine portrait studies of negros [sic] ; one of which we
think we recognize as being Kenneth Spencer;..." Was it?
Adams: Could have been, could have been. Yes, I think it was.
Teiser: [Reading] "...Willard Van Dyke's 'Plant Form'; Sonia Noskowiak's
'Palm Blossom'; Edward and Brett Weston's many fine
studies of form and design. Such a collection of prints
makes us feel that, had we time or money, or both, we would
add photography to our list of favorite hobbies. But we
also know enough about it to realize that photography is hard
labor in one of its most drastic forms, and not a mere
pastime to play at." [Laughter]
Adams: Yes. Being a hobbyist. Unfortunately, there are many people who can
afford to be. That's why so many bad things are done.
Teiser: By the wealthy hobbyists?
Adams: The wealthy hobbyists. They might as well play golf or have a polo
horse or a motorboat. But there's something entrancing about the
whole photographic setup, the cameras, the lenses, the equipment.
It's just unbelievable now, and the precision and quality's unbeliev
able. It's one thing that's gone up. Cars might go down, but I
don't think there's ever been a reason for Ralph Nader to investigate
photographic equipment performance. [Laughs] And sometimes it's
miraculous what they do in the price range, although prices are up.
Meters, Lenses and Film Speeds
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
We have exposure meters — we make demands. Well, a really dependable
meter would cost a thousand dollars, and they cost a little over a
hundred, because they make them in quantity. They're still not really
accurate. I have an English photometer that costs a little over two
hundred dollars now, and it's still the most accurate photometer that
the average person can get. I can think of other photometers that
run up into thousands of dollars; they're really accurate through the
full scale, consistent calibration.
Are they portable?
No. They would be in a suitcase. [Laughs]
be in a small suitcase.
The Leukeish meter would
92
Adams: You always have that problem with the cameras. Now these precision
cameras are really made to tolerances that are unbelievable — one
hundredth of a millimeter, thousandth of a millimeter. I mean they've
really done beautifully, and I don't imagine we ever can significantly
improve on the lenses which we now have.
Teiser: Did the first lenses you used have qualities however that, say,
coated lenses now don't have?
Adams: Well, there were very fine lenses made then, but they weren't
consistent; they weren't very spectacular in their performance and
their coverage. For instance, I doubt if you could get something
like a Super-Angulon wide-angle lens today without benefit of a
computer. I mean, the design is so complex. The perfect flat
field; a five-inch lens that will cover an eight by ten plate, on
axis they call it. And it's beautiful. To figure that just by
arithmetic would be highly improbable. We used lenses like the
Dagor and the Cooke and the Zeiss Protar, which were very fine
lenses. Some were convertible; you could use different elements
separately or together. They gave beautiful images and why nobody
exactly knows. There was some aberration, but it didn't destroy the
visual resolution, which was quite high.
The theory of the coated lens is very intricate, and people
don't understand what happens. But every air-glass surface — that is,
surface of glass to air — reflects about 4 percent of the light
falling on it. If you have a four air-glass element lens, like a
Dagor, you get about 80-plus percent transmission of light; the rest
of it's scattered. But some of that scatter produces a flare over
the image — a very low- impact flare of light. The bad lenses are the
ones that give you a flare in the middle, which is a real flare. But
the average uncoated lens like a Protar would just give you a soft
shadow. It would add a couple of units of exposure, and that would
give you a very smooth image, and the Cooke lenses, which were eight
air-glass, would give you a very soft image for that reason. You
would get almost what we would call today pre-exposure. In black and
white, that's an advantage. Every black and white photographer should
have at least one uncoated lens, a six or eight air-glass, because it
would solve a lot of contrast problems.
When you get into color, you have a different thing, because
flare then takes on the dominant color of the subject, so that if
you're photographing a landscape with much blue sky, you would get
a blue cast. If you're photographing trees, you would get a green
cast. The flare would convey the dominant hue or color of the scene.
So that's why coated lenses are very important now with color.
And then, if you look at a lens which is coated, you'll see a
purple or yellowish cast. If you see a yellow coating, that means
93
Adams: it's transmitting more blue; if you see a purplish-blue cast, that
means it's transmitting more yellow. You used to get lenses that
would be coated different ways; so a 35 mm. camera might not give
you the same color balance with different lenses. All the lenses
of one make are all coated the same — so much blue, so much yellow, or
purple. They have new systems called "super coats ," and they're
getting down to an absolute minimum of flare. So your color purity
is superior now to what it's ever been — better than you ever could
get it before. I know in the old days people always said, "We'll
have to use a lens composed of as few elements as possible."
[Interruption for phone call]
As for the f/64 group, I don't think any of us had a coated lens
at that time. I think I tried one a few years later. And it's
interesting for a photographer to study the quality of his earlier
work. Because in earlier black and white, there's always a longer,
richer scale than there is in many contemporary pictures. Because
we've lost two to four exposing units at the bottom of our curve,
because we have done away with "flare." We get the true luminous
range, and that makes for deep shadow values. You see many pictures,
especially with miniature cameras, where the shadows look very empty —
lifeless, dead, no density. But part of that is due to the fact that
there's absolutely no support of the shadows, which you would get if
you had some flare.
Whereas in color without flare you'd be unhappy. I took a color
picture of Edward Weston sitting by his brick chimney, and everything
went red because the brick was in sun, and this caused a red flare.
In the modern lens you might get only a whisper of red, but you
wouldn't get that all-over reddish cast.
But I don't think any of the f/64 people had anything like that.
The Leitz people, and Zeiss, I think, put out an f/1.5 lens with lens
coating, but it was greenish and it was terrible for color. Then the
Polarizer came in. Before Land invented Polaroid there were several
very crude ways of making polarizing filters. And one was a deposition
of sheep urine crystals on glass or plastic. Now, of all the animals
in the world, the sheep urine condenses into long crystals like a
picket fence, and these could be aligned. So the light that is
vibrating this way (vertical) goes through the fence; the light that
goes that way (horizontal) doesn't!
It also had a color effect. And then Land invented a way to
manufacture a plastic film with polarizing crystals, which is color
less, or practically so. It is one of the great technical achieve
ments of our time. When you look at what that man has accomplished
in various fields, it almost scares you.
We take Polaroid glasses now for granted. You buy 3-D viewers
for five cents and all such stuff. It's all a matter of making a
94
Adams: plastic — hundreds of miles of it, in big sheets — in which the Polaroid
crystals are all aligned. Theoretically, it's extremely complex. Now
you just push a button and this machine does it. [Laughs] So, at any
rate, we didn't have that aid until quite a bit later.
Then the polarizers came in, and were gratefully received. I
can't remember the dates of introduction of these things, but I would
say that most of the f/64 people were using pretty basic equipment —
uncoated lenses, films of the type of Isopan, or Kodak Superanchro-
matic. The speeds were around ASA 64, plus or minus. Many went down
to 24 and lower than that.
Teiser: Were you using ASA speeds then?
Adams: No, we used Weston speeds, and there were the Scheiner and DIN speeds,
all of which are logical arithmetical systems.
The first Weston light meter was designed to help out the
photographer and avoid his making under-exposures, so they added what
they called a "K" factor — and they used first the number 50, which
should have been 64. It mathematically worked out as ASA 64. But
they took one more number just for safety. Finally they found that
people were over-exposing, so they used ASA 64. Fifty is the first
step below. You see, all these numbers — you go from 32 to 40 to 50
to 64, etc. Everything goes up on the log to base 10 number, which
is 0, .1, .2, .3, (which is two times), .4, .5, .6 (which is four
times), .7, .8, .9 (which is eight times), and so on. So all the
lens stops and ASA numbers progress "three." Every time they double,
like 64 to 125, you have two log 10 steps. It's up to the manufac
turer to decide the calibration he wants. Most of the built-in
meters in the cameras are not accurate, very strangely calibrated —
the ones I've come across. But they may be beautiful pieces of
electronic gadgetry. You have to make personal adjustments to a
complex world'.
Brigman, Van Dyke, Edwards, and Cunningham
Adams: But that's getting off the f/64. You want more of that.
Teiser: All of the people in that group really are of interest. Let me read
down a list of those who exhibited.
The first one was not a member of the group, but I think she
was a photographer, and I think Imogen Cunningham said that the
group first met in her studio although she herself — Ann Brigman —
wasn't there.
95
Adams: Ann Brigman, yes. She was the only photographer from the West that
Stieglitz liked. He felt that she had a perception that was very
unusual. Her work was primarily soft focus, and a great deal of it
was entwining nudes with Sierra junipers. Some very effective,
almost art nouveau feeling. But it was very thoughtful and very well
done. I don't remember many more things than her fantasies of the
juniper — the tree shapes, and then the nudes relating thereto, in
sunlight.
Teiser: Was she a professional photographer?
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams :
Yes. I think she did portraits. I don't know too much about her. I
only met her once. But she was quite a considerable person and went
right along with the Stieglitz tradition of trying to see things
photographically , although the definition was goofy most of the time.
You see, they were still afraid of sharp things, and our f/64,
really a visual manifesto, was to come back to the sharpness — the
microscopic revelation of the lens — and as it's perfectly gorgeous,
why hide it?
You've spoken of Willard Van Dyke,
further?
Can you discuss him a little
Well, he was a very vital young man; he had a great imagination and
was a great friend of Edward Weston. He did some very fine stills.
(In fact, he had a fine show of his still photography a little while
ago — very unexpected!) After the f/64 experiences he decided he had
reached the limit of what he could do in still black and white, and
he thought, "It's the movies for me now. I'm going to go into
cinema productions," and he went to New York and became a very
successful and important documentary photographer in the film world.
He went east, and I'm not sure of this, but I think at first he
made a small living by doing stills. He had a remarkable darkroom in
a closet. You know New York and the limit of space. He put shelves
in it, so he'd stand on a stepladder and have developer on the top
shelf, the short stop on the second shelf and the fixing bath on the
third shelf, and then down to the water tub — and then he'd take the
negative or print out to the bathtub and wash them. [Laughs] That's
more or less official. Anyway, he did make a big success in the docu
mentary world. I think he was very close to [Robert J.] Flaherty and
Pare Lorenz and others of that group. There's probably many
associates I don't know of.
And then, after a rewarding career, he had the opportunity to
take over the department of moving pictures — of film — at the Museum
of Modern Art, which is a tribute to his qualities.
96
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
His career just went right along?
It went along very famously and very favorably. He's a fine person.
He started making a living by running a gas station — was that it?
Yes, he was running a gas station over in Piedmont, and a museum
director saw him one day, and he said, "Well, so this is what you do
when you're not in the darkroom. I call it a matter of pump and
circumstance," which is a great pun! [Laughter]
I haven't seen him very much. We're very fond of each other.
He says I'm the only "square" he loves. [Laughter] Well, you can
call me an oddball for some things. [Laughter] Anyway, I know he 's
doing fine.
Then, on my list, there's you and Edward Weston and John Paul Edwards.
John Paul Edwards — I think he was a businessman. As far as I can
remember, he was not a professional photographer. He was an ardent
amateur. And his daughter, Mary Jeanette Edwards, was a great flame
of Van Dyke's before he left for the East. They ran the little studio
together on Brockhurst Street in Oakland. And then something happened-
But John Paul Edwards was an accomplished photographer — enough for you
to admit him to your group?
There's some question, actually, if you wanted to be very cold-blooded
about it, whether he was good enough, but we had no established
standards. I think today a couple of members would have been
eliminated on the basis of standards or accomplishment — for no other
reasons. I don't think he did enough really good work, but he was so
sympathetic! And every organization has valuable enthusiasts that may
not be up to the top level of some of the other people, but still are
very important because they get things done. It's very easy to be
very snobbish in this. But we all accepted him. Which one do you
have1 next on the list?
Imogen Cunningham.
Oh well, she's a great figure. She's very important.
What sort of photographs was she making at that time? She's done a
variety of work.
It has always been mult i -diverse, if you want to use the term. She's
always covered a tremendous field. At that time she was doing
portraits and flowers — details. She made platinum prints. I have
quite a beautiful detail of a magnolia flower. But at that time, you
97
Adams: see, people's techniques weren't what they are today and chemical
knowledge wasn't much either, and unfortunately many of the works of
that period are fading, including mine. We didn't know about two
hypo baths, for example, and we didn't know lots of important
technical things.
Parmelian Prints
Adams :
Teiser ;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Many of my works before 1930 could very easily fade, and have!
Oh, is that right?
The portfolio show they had at the Stanford Museum,* the Parmelian
Prints — fortunately it was a very good set. Only one or two had
begun to turn slightly.
What does the word "Parmelian" mean?
Nothing. The publisher didn't want to use the word "photograph,"
so she concocted this little kind of a bastard combination of Greek
terms from black — "melios." I don't even think that is an accurate
use of the term, but she liked it, so it was used.
Of course, it's a trick, because not meaning anything, people
remember it. [Laughter] But as she wouldn't use the word "photograph"
there had to be some other name. People were so scared of photography.
She was Jean Chambers Moore .
brought into it?
Who was she? How did she happen to be
Teiser:
She was a lady in the book world, a friend of Albert Bender's. He
told her that he was going to subsidize this; would she publish it?
We didn't realize then that we could have done it ourselves — a thing
as small as that. But she did handle it. She received the checks
and deposited them and took a percentage — that's about all she did.
[Laughter] She was all right, but timid, you see; wouldn't say
"photographs." And 1^ was very severely criticized for that. I
should have stood by my guns, but I said, "Well, my guns would have
been spiked immediately because if I'd insisted on 'photographs' she
wouldn't have done it." You see, that's forty-five years ago.
Do you remember Joseph Le Conte's review of that in the Sierra Club
Bulletin?
*The exhibit of this 1927 portfolio of photographs by Ansel Adams
opened on February 20, 1972.
98
Adams: No, I don't.
Teiser: Eighteen prints [reading] "of exquisite composition, each as
technically perfect as it is possible to be produced."
Adams : Oh .
Teiser: [Reading] "The fact that they are the handiwork of Ansel Adams is
sufficient to guarantee their artistic perfection to members of our
club."
He thought the most remarkable was Mount Brewer. It was over
six miles away, he wrote, and it was taken with a "telephotographic
lens." [Reading] "The artist has attempted, and with great success,
to suggest the scenery of the Sierra Nevada in a more pictorial sense
than by a literal representation. By keeping to a simple and rather
austere style, the prints assume a dignity and beauty which is not
generally conveyed by photography."
Adams: Well, that's nice. [Laughs]
He was a very broad man. It's important to realize that a man
of that degree of culture and understanding was interested in the
mountains. He did thousands of pictures, and I printed many of them,
as records of his travels in the Sierra. They were completely
uninspired but perfectly honest photographs. Other people couldn't
tell the difference between his approach and my approach, but he was
sensitive enough to realize that I was trying to add something. I
thought that was a very generous thing, because I definitely was
adding a point of view, where he was interested in the scientific
and the factual.
Teiser: By then had you been with him in the mountains?
Adams: Oh yes, I'd go out on trips with the family.
Teiser: So he'd watched you take pictures.
Adams: Oh yes. And I watched himl He was a wonderful little man and a dear
friend. In fact, there's a book coming out now — his journal. I
forget the name of the publisher.
Teiser: Lewis Osborne.
Adams: Yes, Osborne. I wrote the preface for that.* He asked me questions
I couldn't remember.
*Joseph N. LeConte, A Summer of Travel in the High Sierra . Ashland,
Oregon: Lewis Osborne, 1972,
99
Noskowiak, Weston, Swift, Holder, Kanaga, and Lavenson
Teiser: Well, back to f/64. Sonia Noskowiak.
Adams: She was a very nice gal. A great friend of Edward Weston' s. They
lived together for quite a while. And of course, like most of the
people who worked with Edward, she was deeply influenced in seeing
and technique. I think she's still living.
I think she didn't have as much force as some of the others.
She was so dominated by Edward, she just — grabbed the style without
the substance. But I have seen some very excellent pictures that
she did when she was more herself. She was a lovable person in many
ways.
You see, the instrument that was used in the classic sense was
the eight by ten camera, and the contact print — the eight-ten format
religiously adhered to. Everything squeezed into eight by ten, not
seven by ten, but eight by ten, and of course nature isn't exactly
built that way. Sometimes it becomes difficult to get something
that really is a 6 2/3 by 10 proportion in the world and then try to
make it eight by ten. You know, it's like buying canvasses 20 by 34
and filling them, which of course you can do as a painter because
you can "adjust." But I have a terrible time when people say, "I
want a 20 by 24 'print' of a subject." Well, that's a category; and
I try to bring one dimension, if the photograph is a vertical, to
20 inches. I try to make one dimension as large as I can. And then
it might be 36 or 30 or 26 [in the other dimension]. So they say,
"It's not 20 by 24," and I try to explain that this is a category
and not based on square inches. I think it's Moulin in San Francisco
that charges for photo murals by the square inch, which to me is one
of the funniest things in the world, because paper comes in a roll.
And what do you do with the little stuff you trim off? Like I made
eight prints the other day in the so-called 20 by 24 category. (It
was actually fifteen — there were some in the ashcan, and two more
went today, so I have six left.) Well, the cost of the paper's so
minor compared to the workl
I suppose it's a very small amount per square inch, you know,
so it looks good, and nobody's going to sit down and figure it all
out. If it were one cent a square inch, it would be $1.44 a square
foot, you see. And if it was three by five feet it would be about
$22.50! But the price might be seven hundred dollars! I've had a
man who was so captious about it that I sent him a check for $1.18,
which was the differential cost of the paper. [Laughter] As close
as I could figure.
100
Adams: Anyway, let's get back to f/64. I don't know too much about
Noskowiak. I don't know where she is. I'd like to follow through;
I was very fond of her. She was the subject of many of Edward's
nudes, in what they call (it's not delicate to say it, but) the
"scrawny" period. I mean, she was rather lean and posed in very
vigorous attitudes. And I called those pictures "morguesque,"
because they were printed rather gray, and they didn't have that
wonderful luminance of what he did with Tina Modotti and others in
platinum.
There's something about the photographic print, the pure black
image, that can be very cold, and I'm trying to break away from
that with subtle selenium tones. It makes quite an emotional
difference. Maybe a little four by five print that is just blue-
black; it's a little frigid and when it relates to a nude.... It
might be all right for a rock, but it's all a matter of complex
taste.
Well!
Teiser: Henry Swift.
Adams: Henry Swift was a businessman and founded Henry F. Swift & Company,
a big bond house — stocks and bonds. It's still going. And
Florence Swift was a painter. They were very charming people. And
he was full of vim and vigor, and did a lot of experimental work,
but the thing that got him into the Group f/64 was the series of
pictures he did of mathematical models at the University. They had
made models of equations — three-dimensional equations — in plaster,
sometimes outlined with string and glass. And he photographed these,
and they're extremely beautiful — extremely beautiful.
Teiser: Perhaps that was what one of the exhibition reviewers mentioned as
abstract.
Adams: Yes. Now, here's an interesting thing: there's nothing more
abstract than a three-dimensional mathematical model, but he makes
a photograph of it, it's still a photograph of the model. So you
see it would give a superficial impression of being a photographic
abstraction.
Well, I don't know what else Swift did. I think he tried some
things like mud cracks — a few things. But he was really quite a
nice person. I think he left photography rather early. He also had
some money and helped us out with some of our material expenses,
although we got by with this whole thing at a very low cost — an
amazingly low outlay. Everybody did their own work, and we chipped
in on the announcements. It's an ideal system — but scary at times!
101
Adams: What's the next thing you have?
Teiser: Well, there were the four people who exhibited with you. Preston
Holder.
Adams: I've not seen Preston Holder, and I don't know what he's doing, but
he was pretty good. I don't remember his being outstanding, but he
was terribly sincere. I think we really got these people on the
basis of their sincerity. They all were really tied up with the
work, and loved it.
Teiser: He didn't go on to become a professional photographer?
Adams: Not that I know of, no.
Teiser: Consuelo Kanaga.
Adams: They all called her "Connie." She was very good. She was very
imaginative, very romantic, did some beautiful portraits, was a
little overshadowed by Dorothea Lange. Dorothea Lange never quite
forgave us for not getting her in the group. She at that time was
so pictorial and so fuzzy-wuzzy that it never occurred to us. And
I really regretted it later after seeing more of her work. At that
time it certainly should have been considered, but....
Harroun: Was she doing mostly portraits at that time?
Adams: She did portraits and worked with some Navajo Indians. Maynard
Dixon, her husband, was deeply involved with the Indians and the
Southwest. I think she and Consuelo were in competition, frankly.
I think it was kind of a stylistic competition, as well as in the
portrait business.
Teiser: They were both in the same immediate field?
Adams : Yes .
Teiser: Alma Lavenson.
Adams: Well, she lived in Piedmont, and she was, I think you would say,
kind of the Julia Margaret Cameron of Berkeley. I mean, she tried
very hard — [laughter]. That's a cruel statement.
Teiser: It gives the idea.
Adams: I assumed that she had means and she could do what she wanted. And
then she married a nice man named Wahrhaftig — but that was quite
late, and I think he's dead now. But she did pictures of the Mother
Lode country which were really quite superior. As I say, I don't
102
Adams: know about her business status or whether she just lived on what she
had or whether she did any professional work.
Brett Weston and Edward Weston
Teiser:
Adams:
Then Brett Weston was the last one.
he making then?
What sort of photographs was
Teiser:
Adams:
He was relatively young, and he was very much under the domination
of his father. So he was influenced technically and visually by
his father's work. Not imitating him, you understand what I mean,
because Brett was always a strong individual. And Brett steadily
progressed to become one of the very best of the "younger"
photographers, but he's sixty-something now. And his latest work
with the 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 format is simply superb. He is now secure
in his own expressive domain. But the domination of the old man
was not intentional and Edward didn't like it, but there it was. I,
in fact, was probably one of the very few that were not dominated by
Edward. I mean I used much of the same equipment and materials, but
I always saw things very differently.
Mrs. Newhall writes in her book that the first time you met Eward
Weston you didn't like his work particularly. Is this true?
Yes, it's true. I didn't react. It was — well, you have to get a
little perspective on Edward. Edward was a portrait photographer
in Glendale who really went for the trade, as they say. I mean he
did soft-focus pictures of ladies and shadows against the wall, and
a peculiar quality of pictorialism that was sometimes quite goofy.
And it bothered me because it seemed very mannered and very much
"Hollywood," as I knew it. (You know, "Hollywood" is a term that
covers a million different places at once.)
He was a very nice man, and I met him and the boys — I think two
of them — at Albert Bender's. But he was just making the transition.
And the prints, to me, were kind of chemically green — what they call
commercial paper color. You still get that color; I have to use
selenium to overcome it. And I felt there was a kind of a sterility
about it, and I fought it for several years. And then after I saw
Strand's negatives and realized what straight photography could be,
I gradually came to realize more and more what Edward was trying to
do. Edward had made vast steps forward in those several years. He
was more generous to me than I was to him in the beginning, by far.
I finally realized that some of this work was really what we're all
after in our own way. So about 1931 or '30 we became very close
friends, and at the time of his death we were very close, I think
103
Adams: really close in understanding and sympathy. He never depended on
anybody — he wasn't that kind of a man. I guess I would be one of
the few people he was glad to have around when he needed them. It's
a feeling. He was very individualistic, and absolutely honest, and
he flagellated himself in his living. He wouldn't compromise one
bit. He used to say that doing a photograph on a commission is
kind of prostitution. And I said, "What about the portraits?"
"Well," he said, "that's just dating," and he used to laugh. [Laughs]
But in the depths of the Depression, Albert Bender was keeping
all his friends going; he got a job for Edward from the MJB coffee
people, the Branstens. They were really very wonderful and generous
people — one of these really great San Francisco Jewish families, you
know. I doubt if there's ever been anything like the families.
There were a dozen of them, and they were the most generous and out
going and intelligent people I have ever known. And they said, "Well,
of course we'll give him a job. We have wanted quality pictures.
Just have advertisements of a beautiful white china cup of coffee
(and set), and just say, 'Photograph by Edward Weston for MJB'."
This is called an institutional ad, you see. And they had this
beautiful set of English china — pure white. So they got that to the
studio and all the coffee he could make. All he had to do was to
create compositions. It was entirely up to him. There was no re
striction and no "copy" with it.
He worked on that thing for two or three weeks and finally he
called them up and said, "I can't do it. It doesn't mean anything
to me." It's a very interesting thing, because the professional
photographer, you see, lives like an architect, on his clients. I
mean, you want to build a house, well, I build the house for you.
I try to keep my standards, but still I try to figure out what you
need. But Edward just couldn't do that. To him, putting a beautiful
piece of porcelain and arranging it any way he wanted, and putting
coffee in it black — you know, typical, wonderful for his work — he
couldn't do it.
And they all understood! They understood perfectly. He'd
done six or seven for them, and they said, "Well, we'll buy these
whether we use them or not, and we understand perfectly. You've
been perfectly honest." That was quite an event, and a credit to
the Branstens.
He did a series of pictures for the publication of Leaves of
Grass — Random House. And he also did some pictures of the West for
the Automobile Club of Southern California. But that was still his
work. They were buying his creative work. They weren't giving him
an external assignment.
104
Adams: Brett has always more or less carried that theory out. It's fine if
it's what he wants to do as an easel painter, without any strictures-
if they can use it.
I think that's a great idea, too. You have to make a living,
though. You can adjust. In fact, I told Brett, "Well, after all,
Michelangelo painted the popes." "Well," Brett said, "that's not
the way I would do it."
You come across all kinds of confusions and strange personal
quirks in this photographic world. Stieglitz never did any commis
sions; Strand never did, except for some social movements. [Eliot]
Porter has never done anything for professional commercial
assignment, to my knowledge; he writes his own assignments. He can
afford to.
Applied Photography
Adams: I've done everything from morgue photography and surgical
photography [laughs] to commercial advertisements and architecture.
Teiser: You've done surgical photography?
Adams: Yes, I've done quite a lot of surgical photography. Very interesting.
Teiser: I should think so.
Adams: Not creative. It's a sheer absolute — it has to be good, you know —
clear. And I did some movies once; it was quite an experience. Very
poor stuff.
[End Tape 5, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 5, Side 2]
Adams: Well, I'm a peculiar mixture, and one of the few I know of that
combined the professional life with the creative life. That would be
a very important thing, I think, in the future, to find out how many
people would do that. The only reason I got by with it was that I
had some wonderful breaks and great clients.
I did many catalogues for the [San Francisco] museums, pictures
of paintings and sculptures, and I did, oh, a lot of architectural
work. I think one of my biggest projects was the series of
photographs of Maurice Sterne's murals in the Department of Justice,
which were produced as original prints. We made quite a few port
folios of these. Then Albert Bender had acquired a very handsome set
105
Adams: of Chinese carvings — marbles — and we did limited editions of that.
And, as I say, I'd have an advertising job and an architectural job,
and I'd have a surgery job, and a portrait now and then.
I think the worst surgical job I had I was on the platform, very
high. And operating rooms get very hot, and I was not bothered at all
by the operation; this was one of these breast resections with an
electric knife. Well, the combination of the anesthetic [laughter]
and the heat, and the peculiar smoky effluvia of burning epidermis!
And here I was up there — it must have been ninety- some thing degrees,
hanging over this tripod. And that's the only time I really had
trouble, because I just needed oxygen, you know. [Laughs]
Then, during the War, my last days in Los Angeles at Art Center
School, we had a small group who went and worked with the Civil
Defense group, and one of the problems was the hypothetical
identification of corpses, should there be an attack. How do you
identify them? So I worked out a system using a mirror. And we'd
make a photograph of the victim, but he'd be in a mirror so you would
get the full face as well as the profile. Now the full face, then,
had to be and could be easily reversed in the enlargement. We would
go over to the Los Angeles morgue and make these photographs.
Oh, they got into all kinds of situations. I remember one time
they wheeled this old character out — he was a drunk, he may have
passed out for good. They lifted him off the table, threw him on
the floor and gave him a kick with the foot and said, "Now this is
probably the way it looks after a bomb attack." So after you got
over that, you figure out, "Well, here he is. The figure's lying
there, and how do you get the camera in and what focal length lens,
and what adjustments to get his profile, and what lighting?" That
information could be very valuable, even if very morbid I
My last session there was through at ten-thirty p.m. and I had
my car all loaded up and I drove right up to Edward Weston's in
Carmel, and got there in the late morning and was absolutely
exhausted. And, oh boy, I still smelled of formaldehyde.' Edward
says, "Whew, where you been, Lazarus?" [Laughter] Funny. So he
made a photograph of me. (I now have a beard.) I was looking very
weird, very tired, but then I was through with Los Angeles, thank
goodness — and then I went on to Manzanar.
Giving Photography Museum Status
Adams: Well, now, how about the — any other names to consider there?
Teiser: Those were all the names I had in connection with f/64. Were there
other people who also exhibited with you in later periods?
106
Adams: No. But what I wanted to say — I think I may have mentioned it
before — was the fact that we existed only for a short time.
Teiser: You mentioned that you made a manifesto. Was it published anywhere?
Adams: I think it was published in a magazine somewhere, or on the museum
wall. That's where it really was. But Weston had decided that we
could very easily create a cult or be typed, you see, by continuing
this — this f/64 — into a continuing thing. So we voted to disband,
and in one sense it's one of the most healthy things you can imagine
in not perpetuating a cult or an idea or an association, because all
of us could have been very easily tied in then with a "school" — you
know what I mean. Edward Weston school, West Coast school.
Now we still are in that mess, but it's not intentional. So
many of us are criticized as being just a continuation of this old
"West Coast" school. Well, of course, nothing could be further from
the truth, see. Our Friends of Photography has covered many, many
facets of photography — the most contemporary back to historic. It's
surprising anyone should get labeled these days, but they do.
Teiser: Well, this was one of the other things I was interested in about
Group f/64, that it has had such a very long-lasting effect.
Adams: It had a tremendous impact. There was no plan to have an impact.
Well, I guess we thought we would help, but I mean, we had no idea
at all what would happen. And within that year it influenced the
whole course of American photography.
Teiser: Do you think it was in any way what they call an idea whose time had
come?
Adams: Yes, I think absolutely it was that. It was a group of young people,
and they weren't radical activists as you have today. They didn't
spend their time figuring out ways of doing things. They figured
out more the doing of them. And it was this problem of being
dedicated to the idea.
The idea of closing f/64 off, very short duration, was the
healthiest thing we could do, because we weren't any kind of a formal
organization. We had no offices, we had no board, we weren't
"founded." We were just a very informal group. And Willard
[Van Dyke] and I, I guess, were the ones who did most of the
activating and planning of things. There were others who did much
too. But there's always a few that take, you know, more credit than
effort.
Harroun: What part did Edward Weston play?
or—?
Was he really interested in it
107
Adams: He contributed. He didn't do much to the concept — he just agreed
and contributed. Most of us did that. But there was always some
body who had to do the telephoning and sending out the cards.
Teiser: Who actually chose the prints for the exhibit?
Adams: That was the group. We sent out cards to all the members. I think
Willard did it or I did it or we both did it, I forget. Willard did
more than I did. We said we have an opportunity for a show, and now
we'll all meet when we can, and gave some dates. And they all met
over at Brockhurst or at my place. I think we met twice. And we
picked out a set of pictures for the show and then the director — his
name was [Lloyd] Rollins — a very sympathetic, wonderful guy — he
helped us design the show. And he threw out the baddies and kept in
the goodies. You know it's always very important to have an objective
analysis from the outside. In other words, if I'm going to have a
show I never would put it up myself. I might pick out a hundred
pictures that I like and that I wanted up and then say, "Well now,
we've got to get sixty out of these." Nancy Newhall did that big
show in 1963. I was terribly upset because there were a few of my
favorites that were not in it. And when the show was up I realized
why they weren't in there — repetitive. She was absolutely right I
And the same with selecting portfolios. For Portfolio Five,
which is ten prints, we had twenty potentials. And we'd just show
them to people and talk and say, "Now what's your reaction?" And
I would see their points of view, and I got it down to ten prints.
And it was very good because of that, better than if I had just made
the selection myself. Many photographers don't do that. They feel
that they're the only ones that can judge their own work. But a lot
of things are done on the emotion of the moment, and it's awfully
hard for the artist to have an objective point of view.
In fact I'm thinking now of putting in Portfolio Six two
pictures that were done in the twenties. They really have an impact.
It took this long to find it out. [Laughs]
Teiser: Was Group f/64's a big show?
Adams: No, no. I think there were — oh my — seventy or eighty prints, in
that area — maybe less.
Teiser: Rollins was interested in photography, was he?
Adams: He was. He was simply marvelous. If it hadn't been for Rollins,
I don't think we could have ever gotten the show, ever got recognition.
Because he was young and he was very much ahead of his time and very
alive.
108
Teiser: It seems to me that as late as the fifties, the photographic
magazines were complaining that museums didn't recognize photography.
But we've been doing it in San Francisco for quite a long time.
Adams: Yes, I think we were one of the very first. Well, I won't say that —
the Buffalo Institute of Art [the Albright Art Gallery] gave the
Photo-Secession show [in 1910]. But there were very, very few shows.
The Metropolitan had some prints. They still have some interest. I
just got a letter the other day (relative to my forthcoming exhibit
in April 1974) saying they'd like me to conform to their mount sizes
because they have the frames for them. My god, they're spending
$25,000 on a show, and they're worried about a few lousy frames and
mats, 14 1/4 by 19 1/2, or something. Throws the whole thing out of
kilter. [Laughter] God] But I think I can get over that all right.
But things are institutionalized. And out here they were hung
under glass and people had their own size mats, and we all had
different size mats in mind. Your mat is part of your vision, I
mean. But you go to the Metropolitan and other museums and you'll
see little things this big, you know, in a 14 by 19 mat, I mean,
because that goes into the frame. [Laughter]
One of the important things is that museums were scared. It's
the art groups — painting and sculpture groups that scalped photography.
They didn't want to confront these "new" people. Now you had that
same thing in San Francisco, my beloved home city. The artists
there have been very negative to photography. In fact to the point
of — almost sometimes just wishing they could cancel things out. Due
to Mr. Eldridge T. Spencer, when he became president of the Art
Association, *after the War [World War II], he was able to promote
a department of photography. There was great opposition from the
"art" people, Art Association people, I should say. But he put it
through, and I went out and got ten thousand dollars from the
Columbia Foundation and we started. We had a wonderful department.
He was happy and I was happy.** But whenever we tried to get a gallery
to do something with our work, the painters were there first. Maybe
the artists weren't really afraid of us. They were just jealous of
time, space, and money.
And the majority of painters today, I think, look on photography
as an intruder. Very few painters I know have any interest in it or
any sympathy for it. We have more sympathy for them by a hundred
times. I was asked to put on a show at the San Francisco Museum of
Art in October 1973. It was supposed to be a very important show.
And they put on a big song and dance about it. It was to be
coincidental with the reopening of the museum — the whole museum is
being redecorated, reorganized. I said, "Well now, I want a
description of the gallery space so I can start thinking." They
said, "Well, it's going to be in the corridor. The corridor's going
to be improved." And I said, "Nuts to that," in not exactly the same
*The San Francisco Art Association.
**See also pp. 374-375 and other references to the California School
of Fine Arts as indexed.
109
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser :
Adams :
words. I said, "If I'm having an exhibit, I'm having a gallery or
else." I was thinking about myself and photography. I mean, if this
was, as they said, an important show, then it deserved a gallery. I
wouldn't mind in the least having my pictures in a group thing in the
corridor if they're going to bring out part of their collection and
put it in the corridor. Well, that's all right. But when you have a
show, an exhibit, and it's an important one, and it's an artist —
somebody who's achieved a certain level of distinction, and that's
what they tell you, and they want that, I don't want it in the
corridor. I mean, it's just a matter of — I guess you'd call it
principle.
That's where they hang most of the photographs at the museum —
Yes. It-'s terrible — awful light. Well, they're fixing it up a
little better, but they still don't know anything about light. They
won't listen. I can give them a mathematical formula — so many foot
candles, so many candles per square foot, environmental percentage,
all of that has been worked out. It's baby talk. And yet I know the
last diagram I saw of the gallery, the lights were no higher than here
at home. There won't be enough light on it. "Well, double the
lighting." "Well, we can't. The circuits won't stand it." "Well,
double the circuits." "We haven't got the money." [Laughter] God!
So this whole proposition of struggling to get recognition for
photography ... .I'll gladly put myself down for photography as a
whole, and if all they had was a corridor and there wasn't anything
else, well, that would be all right. I mean, you're often shown in
terrible situations. But part of the f/64 objective was to give
photography museum dignity. In other words, if it's good, it's good
enough to show it in a museum. Painting, and etching, and
lithography, and drawings and photography. The Metropolitan Museum
now has a division called the Department of Prints and Photography
in the Department of Art. Well, that's a step — they at least use the
word.
The first photographic prints in American photography, did they show
in galleries early?
No. And I can't give you a detailed account, but I think the Photo-
Secession show was the very first one to have a museum show. Now,
Beaumont Newhall could tell you that; I can't. But there were
damned few and far between. Not until Newhall became interested in
photography at the Museum of Modern Art in the thirties and forties.
San Francisco and the f/64 came first, and then the Museum of Modern
Art had a series of photograph exhibits after that.
In 1933 I went to Yale and had a letter to Dean [Everett V.]
Meeks. And Dean Meeks was a very charming, rotund gentleman, and he
110
Adams: looked at my pictures and said, "Why, remarkable, remarkable,
remarkable!" And I had a print about this big [gesture]. He said,
"That's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. What's
it of?" I said, "Foliage at Mills College." He said, "You don't
understand. What's it of — what tapestry?" And I said, "It's a
photograph of nature." And he looked at me and he said, "Well, now,
I don't — I just haven't made myself clear. What work of art is that
a representation of? What did you do that of?" And I says, "I took
it of a bunch of weeds.'" [Laughs] I was just out of my mind! I mean
I couldn't believe this man — I said, again, "These are all photographs
not of paintings or drawings or anything, but they're photographs of
nature." "Well, that's remarkable, you must show these."*
So I had a show at Yale in '34 or something. But here was the
Dean of Fine Arts at Yale University who could not get through his
head that all these photographs were not photographs of something else
somebody had done on some graphic medium. He never thought of taking
a camera and photographing a landscape or a detail of nature.
Camera Clubs, Groups, and Galleries
Teiser: This was part of the reason for all the camera club magazines perhaps.
They didn't have anybody else to show the pictures to.
Adams: No, they didn't. The camera club is a very interesting thing. It's
primarily a social get-together of people interested in a hobby. Most
camera clubs have never made a pretense of art. The Photographic
Society of America, of which I'm a Fellow (I don't know why), largely
represents this approach to photography. They're absolutely divorced
and separate from the creative stream. For instance, the admiral —
awful nice man — Admiral [E.G.] Forsyth makes just beautiful pictures.
He is a trustee of the Friends of Photography, and his pictures are
really something. Just one little theme: light and sunset, light
reflections on water, dark/ light. He never does anything else, but
he does it so well that I've got one of his prints that's a beautiful
gem in my collection.
Well, he said it would be fine if we could have an article on
the Friends in the journal of the Photographic Society of America.
And we had the article, and there was no comment whatsoever. It's
just the kind of photography that's — it's just another world. It's
a sewing bee. They have a technical section which is ridiculous.
Anyhow, it's entirely a world apart.
Then of course, with the advent of the Depression and the photo-
documentarists, you had another world apart. We had the Photo League
*See also pp. 319-320.
Ill
Adams: and we had what is now known as the "concerned photographer." It's
a very important term, and you have to take it for what it means.
It really means photographers who are concerned with our environ
mental and social conditions. Now they're concerned with that, but
that doesn't necessarily make it creative art. I'm concerned with
something else too. I'm supposed to give a talk to them in the
fall, and that's going to be my theme — that my concern is different
from theirs. But it's just as deep concern, because I think it
includes the whole thing. And of course I can go on and probably
put myself out on a limb very quickly with it.
Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street, that book he did on the
ghetto, is a very important thing, and some of the photographs he
did are extraordinarily fine. But our group of photographers are
interested, no matter what your subject is, in the photograph. I
mean does it have an emotional wallop, aesthetic wallop, and is it
"technically adequate"? It looks better if it has a theme, and I
think that's one of the things that I've had to contend with. I've
always had some kind of a theme, whether it's been conservation or
Japanese-American relocation, etc. But the person today either
works with a definitely social theme, of minority groups or the
oppressed, or else with some absolutely internal, personal kind of
experience, what we often call a "trip."
I think I mentioned the other day the photograph, 11 by 14
inches, of a lawn in which there was an out-of-focus dog in the
middle of it, and that was hanging on a museum wall. Now that was
a symbol of something to the photographer, but to the spectator,
God knows! [Laughter]
Now there are groups in New York, like the Circle of Confusion —
those people are largely technical. They sit around with drinks and
dinner and yak, and they don't do much of any work. All over the
country there are workshops beginning and unfortunately ending,
because they just don't have the complete picture of the problem.
But they are important because they bring people together in the
creative sense.
The sad thing is the number of galleries that are starting up.
Having had a gallery myself, I know whereof I speak. They have
absolutely no concept of the work and the money involved in it.
They have great enthusiasm to have a gallery. And they put in a
gallery and lights and put out an announcement. But they don't
realize that running a gallery takes a terrific amount of publicity —
primarily an important list of artists who may be shown. You have to
do that. You can't go out and just ask "Joe" to show, and just
extoll "Joe the photographer."
112
Adams: New galleries are starting. Some of them are very well funded, with
a tremendous amount of money. The Light Gallery in New York is
typical. What I saw there was certainly of no consequence whatso
ever. The Witkin Gallery is I think the best in the country,
because Lee Witkin combines the books, the old stuff, the new
stuff. It's a nonpretentious place. It's just a mixed up,
beautiful, simple setup, with no obvious money involvement that you
see. I know the rent costs him something and he has a nice deck
for entertaining. The gallery itself is small, but he has a
priceless treasure of photographs. He knows photography, knows how
to get it, and puts on these exhibits without pretension. And he's
doing very well.
But there was a gallery started in Chicago, called Limited
Image Gallery, that started out with a big fanfare and had a big
show of mine and others. And all the money they took in selling
prints, which were not prints from the wall, but prints on order,
they spent for the rent, the lights, and so forth, so they went
bust. And I'm in the hole for three thousand dollars, and several
other people I know are out. I'm the prime loser in the case
because I had more prints. But they had absolutely no sense. They
stuck labels to the back of the prints, which contracts the prints
and shows on the surface. Well, they might be used for other
exhibits, but you can't sell them. When you look at them in the
light, you see the defect.
Liliane De Cock had mounted her color pictures on beautiful
mats, and then they stuck overmats on them, and a label on the back
in addition. And then one print was just scratched right across —
the only one of its kind. She couldn't possibly make another one
like it.
So here's a gallery that started up and they didn't even know
the fundamentals of care of photographs , let alone operation of the
gallery. And we have that now, all over the country — new galleries,
new failures.
And quite a number of publications, which are not — well,
Aperture is about the only one that survived. Friends of Photography,
they're starting a quarterly.* I think that will be pretty good,
because we have a good background. We don't have any money, but
we're out on a big fund campaign now. We're a non-profit educational
organization. We have the Ferguson Fund of twenty thousand dollars,
which gives about fifteen hundred dollars a year to a creative
photographer. It's been run not as a fly-by-night thing, but pretty
solid, well planned.
*The initial issue of the quarterly, Untitled //I, was published in
the autumn of 1972.
113
Adams :
Teiser ;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
But here's photography, in which there's more millions expended per
week than all of the old masters in the whole time of the
Renaissance spent on canvas and paint — or frescoes. You know, it's
just fantastic. But most of it is a diary. The Polaroid process
is in one sense directed to the diarist. Instead of saying, "We
went to Grandma's for Thanksgiving turkey," by gosh there are
pictures and pictures and pictures of Grandma and the Thanksgiving
turkey! This is very important. But they've also gone into the
potential art field with their four by five, and very much into the
"concerned photographer" field with the pictures that are made by
photographers who want to record the scene.
Well, I'm sort of getting ahead of myself.
Coming up to the present and going back to the past — that's fine.
I guess you've said what in general the over-all effect of the
f/64 group was.
My only regret was that we didn't do one publication — one portfolio
or one publication, because I think that might have had historic
value, but on the other hand, it might have rigidized it a bit, too,
you see.
Rollins had also an exhibit of Moholy-Nagy.
Did that have any effect?
Do you remember that?
That was the first of them. Yes, but not as photography because
most of his photographs were photograms. I think I've described
what the photogram was.
No one picked up any of that here?
Well, I won't say that. I think it's quite an illuminating thing.
His photographs as prints were simply terrible. They were spotted,
they were ugly, they were bad tones. But his concepts were very
important. Moholy-Nagy was entirely interested in design and not
substance — not the subject itself. So I think he did have a
definite effect on this approach, and I think that people didn't
forget it.
The Golden Gate International Exposition Exhibit
Adams: Of course, you have to say that the biggest photographic show was at
the 1940 Fair [the Golden Gate International Exposition]. I think
I told you about that.
114
Teiser: You haven't. We have the catalogue, A Pageant of Photography, and
were going to ask you about it.
Adams: Yes, because that was very important in the sense that it was just
big, and I griped and I griped and I griped because at the 1939 Fair
there was no photography, and Tim [Timothy] Pfleuger — he was a great,
really great man, a wonderful person — he called me up one day and he
said, "Adams, we've got a little money. Would you like to run the
photography department?" Well, I didn't have any money, but I said,
"God, yes. Tell me about it." He said, "Well, in the Fine Arts
building, we'll give you some galleries and we'll give you a
secretary — she's a very attractive Italian girl who spells **f with
a 'ph'." [Laughter] And he said, "We've got sixteen hundred dollars
in addition to the secretary. It's all yours."
And I went over there, and there were these big rooms, and we
painted them, and my God, they looked beautiful. The lighting was
only fair, but I didn't worry about that. And I had the equivalent
of thirty-seven large galleries of photographs. And I'm not a
museum man at all. I had Weston, both Westons, and Moholy-Nagy, and
Arnold Gen the, a big show of contemporary color photography, and the
Photo League. And early western photography which, if you look back
at, there's some extraordinary things in it. But it's gone now; you
can't find them. They printed on leather — 1868, something like that.*
And I had the equivalent of the f/64, a group show.
Boy, that was an awful hard job, but it was a contribution, and
that's what brought, for the first time, photography in many of its
approaches, to the attention of the people in the West. Before that,
nobody 'd ever seen anything. I tried to get a show from Stieglitz
and, you know, the old boy nearly did it. He said, "I'm sorely
tempted," and I said, "God, Stieglitz, this is the chance to do
something. I'll paint the gallery any way you say. We have guards;
it'll be perfectly safe. And if you'd only — " Well, then he
finally decided that he couldn't do it. If he did it, he'd have to
send to other museums. He trusted me to take care of them, but he
couldn't trust any of the museums to do it! He gave me all this
fantastic negative monkey business, but still I was sorry I lost
that. But I did have "The Steerage," a reproduction from Camera
Work.
It was a very good show. It did bring to San Francisco, at
least, an awareness of photography it had never had before.
*The exhibit included an 1861 photograph on leather of Brewer Camp
near Monterey, photographer unknown.
115
Timing in Photography
Teiser: Who was it, incidentally, who did the ten billion studies of a cup
and saucer? Edward Steichen?
Adams: That is apocryphal. [Laughter]
Teiser: I was thinking of that when you were talking about Weston taking the
MJB photographs.
Adams: Any photo-scientist, technologist, even at that time, would have been
able to figure out the reciprocity factor and would not have needed
to make ten billion pictures of the cup and saucer. These stories,
you know — like the one that I waited for three days to get this
picture or that — I never waitedl The only time I waited for anything
in my life was on top of Kearsarge Pass, waiting for some clouds to
go away from the Kearsarge Pinnacles, and they didn't. I waited all
afternoon, and all the clouds kept moving right along the line. But
we have to be very fair about that, because when we know what we're
going to do, especially when we have assignments, then we have to
wait. But my "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" picture was taken
with the differential of only fifteen seconds. The Lone Pine
sunrise ["Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine"] — I just
was there at the right time. The "Grand Tetons and Snake River" was
all within ten minutes.
Weston used to say, "If you wait here trying to see if
something's going to happen, you're probably losing something
wonderful over there." So he never waited. And I wouldn't unless
I really knew something was to "happen."
I mean like one night we had a green flash coming up — the sun
goes down against a sharp horizon, and there's a green-emerald
momentary flash. And there was a ship coming, and I thought, "This
could be one of the craziest things." And I got out the big camera
with the very long lens, you see. The idea was that it would be
perfectly marvelous if we could photograph the ship in front of the
setting sun with the green flash. Well, it almost made it. If I'd
been living a quarter of a mile down the coast, I would have gotten
it. Then I figured out, well, so what? [Laughter] My lens wasn't
really big enough — you have to have one of those huge mirror lenses.
But, it was a pretty good green flash. Might even be one tonight.
Ever seen a green flash?
Teiser: No. Mr. Spencer said you had a great interest in the green flash.
Adams: Well, the green flash is a very interesting phenomenon. It takes a
knife-edge ocean line (there can't be any clouds) and as the sun
descends, I guess you would say, the spectrum is sectored. The blue
116
Adams: light is completely scattered, the red rays are refracted, and
there's a beautiful emerald flash for about a tenth of a second —
it's very short — just pht! Like that. And it's a beautiful
emerald. We've seen it here quite often. It has to be, as I say,
a knife-edge sky, because if there's any diffusion or clouds you
don't get it. We might get it tonight, but I don't know.
Teiser: I have another story that's probably apocryphal, but I'll ask you
about it. This is about you, and someone told me tha£ you were in
the mountains in the summer, and you saw something that you thought
you'd like to photograph in the snow. So the next winter you packed
up all your equipment on an animal, and one glass plate, and went
up into the mountains, took the picture, and came back. [Laughter]
Adams: I never did such a damned thing in my life I You can discount that
one. [Laughter]
There is a story, however, about the Santa Fe Railroad. They
had a terrible wreck at Durango in New Mexico, and they sent out
their photographer from Chicago, who was just, you know, the
railroad photographer. And he arrived on the train the next day,
and he got out and walked up the hill and studied very carefully,
and he took one picture and went back to Chicago. [Laughter] He
said, "They told me to go out and get a picture, which I did."
[Laughter]
No, these stories are really remarkable. They probably stem
from the fact that the picture of Half Dome ["Monolith, the Face of
Half Dome"] was taken when I only had two plates left; I had taken
many plates that day, but I only had two plates left, and I did one
exposure of Half Dome with an ordinary K-2 filter. And that was my
first insight into visualization, because I suddenly realized what
the image was going to be — the shadow of the cliff and the sky
would be about the same in value; it would be dull, and it would not
have anything at all of the romantic, really super-dramatic impact.
And I had one more glass plate, and a very strong F filter,
Wrattan F, and I put that on, and I made this picture — this big one —
it's around the corner [on the studio wall]. I knew what was going
to happen, and that's probably my first conscious visualization.
But that was just because I'd packed this camera up through this
God-awful snow; it was really very difficult getting there. I'd
taken quite a few pictures, and how easy it would have been to have
taken all the pictures before I got there, or made a few mistakes.
See how chancey all this is.
I sat down on one of the best plates I ever made, in Yosemite.
It was of Tenaya Canyon from above. I leaned these plates against
a chair, you see, and then I moved over to fix something else, and
then I sat down, and one of these plates had fallen down. Cra-aa-ck,
117
Adams: crunch. And here was this picture that I'd spent three hours
climbing down a canyon — I took three pictures, two of them weren't
any good, something happened. This one was a beautiful negative.
I just ruined it, you know. [Laughter] So, I mean, it's not always
apocryphal. Happens all the time.
Teiser: You know what you want, but you do take a number of exposures still,
do you?
Adams: What I do: if I come across a very exciting thing which I know is
a picture, especially if I'm taking film pack, I'll take at least
two, three, or four. But they're all the same. I don't "bracket"
my exposures. What's called "bracketing" is nothing but indecision.
[Laughter] When I read my values, I like to know what my exposure
is. Once in a while, you'll think of another interpretation and do
it a different way, and give a different development on it. But the
idea like Margaret Bourke-White had, of just setting up and going
from f/45 to f/3.2, up and down the line, knowing that one would be
a better exposure than the others....
Teiser: I have my usual list of many questions here, but would you like to
stop for today?
Adams: I can go on some more. Let's finish the tape.
Teiser: All right.
Edwin Land and the Polaroid Camera System
Teiser: Perhaps you have something in mind that continues what we were
talking about now. For instance, what about the Land camera and
visualization?
Adams: This is a very important thing. I've always been interested in
anything new in the mechanical aspect of things, and before 1950 —
'47 or '48 — I met Edwin Land.
Teiser: How did you meet him?
Adams: I heard him at an Optical Society lecture when he presented the
Polaroid camera process, which was an historic event, and then we
went to Cambridge [Massachusetts] and came over to this little
laboratory, and he took my picture with a great big eight by ten
camera. The process was in eight by ten format in the laboratories,
He sat me down under lights and things, and exposed the picture,
processed it; there it was, brown and of rather awful quality. It
118
Adams: was his very first experimental work. But by gosh, it was a one-
minute picture! And that excited me no end; I mean the thought
that you could really do that.
So I told him that I was interested, that I felt that he had
something absolutely unique — an historic step. So he said, "Well,
I'd like you to be a consultant for the company (at one hundred
dollars a month) and just send in your ideas." *And so that's where
it all started. I'm now up to memo 2078. It's considerably more
than one hundred dollars a month, thank God. But out of all this
came the idea. They progressed from the brown tone to a clean
black and white image. That seemed necessary; it was a first step.
Of course, by 1950, 1952, he had the whole future planned right up
to now and beyond. The development of color, the new cameras; it
was all written out, and many groups in laboratories were given
assignments to develop. And nothing like this has been known before.
It's fantastic.
At first I claimed that the thing against the print was the
color, and that it should be black and white. I'm no real tech
nician, but they would send out films, and I would take the camera
out and try all kinds of experiments and then I'd send in my
comments, and in good time came the black-and-white image.
And then I urged we should have something for the professional,
meaning something he could use in the conventional view camera. If
Polaroid was not going to make a view camera, they have to use what
we've got. So we must have an individual "pack." Well, in Palo
Alto [where Edwin Land spent some time], we used to walk up and
down the street in the evenings. Land said, "Well, how many people
would use it?" I said, "Oh, gosh, I can think of fifty right now."
Slight exaggeration, but I believed it. [Laughs] I said, "I'm a
professional and I can think of nothing more wonderful than getting
a Polaroid print out of a view camera in the four by five category."
Well, today we have it, and you can see it on the wall [of the
studio area, where prints are hung]. Some of those prints, a couple
of them, at least, are very early ones, and the whole technique and
the whole idea of the adapter and how it would work — the technique
is all theirs, but I was just promoting the image quality. It's a
very interesting thing: a person employed by Polaroid who works
along all the time (this would apply to any company) — he's working
with a film, say Type 52, and he knows what the film can do. Then
he begins to look around for subjects that fit Type 52. Well, the
whole thing becomes static, and a lot of beautiful pictures come
in because there's nothing better for Type 52 than a foggy day in
Point Lobos. But my job was, as a professional, to take it on
certain assignments, real or contrived, and see where the film
failed. That was the important thing.
119
Adams: Here's the thing that I, Ansel Adams, was requested to do by their
advertising agency, and I do it, and the scale of the film isn't
adequate. So in a sense I was responsible for the present four by
five, by pleading and begging and support. And now it's approaching
a twenty-million-dollar-a-year sale, just alone on the four by five.
But the multi-million dollar thing is in the camera which is for the
public, and all the four by five, black and white, color, and the
experimental material — all this stuff couldn't exist without vast
public sale of the popular products.
Teiser: What are the implications of the four by five? That you have a
permanent negative?
Adams: You have several varieties. You have Type 1, which is a very high-
contrast print which is used in the graphic arts, and is really
quite remarkable because you can make screened images of it. You
put an engraving screen in front of the negative and paste the
resulting pictures right on a sheet with type, and re-photograph it
for "offset" purposes. You can also do all kinds of fancy, really
very interesting aesthetic experiments, because this has only a one
to two-and-a-half step range. You can exaggerate textures. (You
can do a texture image of that drab cloth, greatly exceeding its
original contrast.) Type 52 is the standard high-speed film, 500 at
least; they say 400, but my exposure trials usually give 500-plus.
It has a limited exposure scale as does color, but it gives a
beautiful print.
Then there's Type 57, which they call their 3000 film, which is
for me 4000 ASA daylight, the fastest film that was ever made. It's
extraordinary. Sitting in here, at dusk, the light would be almost
too bright for it. But you can work at night with available light
and get the feeling of environmental lighting. I've used some film
up to 20,000 ASA, experimental film — fantastic stuff.
Then there's the Type 55 PN, which gives you both the negative
print and the negative. It's quite remarkable; not fast. It's
quite slow — about 50-64 ASA. Then there's the Type 58, which is
Polacolor, four by five, and the pack film, Type 108. Then there's
a new camera, the Aladdin (which is a temporary name — I guess they'll
use it), which is totally different and absolutely remarkable.
Then they have a very high-speed film that they use for
oscilloscope photography — around 10,000 ASA. And they have also a
marvelous material, which people don't take advantage of as they
should, called Type 47, which is one of the sharpest transparencies
for slides. And you have ways of controlling contrast with this
material.
Teiser: It's used in laboratories and industry.
120
Adams: I have a whole collection of slides in which photographs are
projected on a screen with the standard lantern-style projector.
It is remarkable. They tried it one time with a 2 1/4 by 2 1/4
projector, but it didn't get over, and it was too bad because the
images were so sharp and so beautiful — such a great range to them.
Then they also have another material known as PolaLine 146-L
which gives a very high contrast transparency. If you want to do a
graph or a page of type, it would be perfect. Because of the
particular chemistry and the physical system involved, this is the
sharpest image available to date. The diffusion is within a very,
very short angle.
I've always considered the Polaroid process as an intensely
creative one, not only because of the inherent beauty of the
material, which has, if you want to speak photo-scientif ically, a
linear scale and cannot be duplicated by any ordinary print. But it
also has the element of immediacy. You see exactly what you're
getting. When you're making a picture under static conditions, you
can make an immediate correction. Or if you're working in fast
situations, once you have one picture you know what the others are
going to be.
There is a new aesthetics involved in this immediacy, and
that's what I think is so important.
I'm talked out!
Harroun: Your photographs on the backs of Aperture — those are marvelous.
They must have had —
Adams: Well, I'm responsible for a lot of those. Not my own, but other
people trying to get good images with the process.
Teiser: Yours must have had a tremendous impact.
Adams: I was one of the first ones that used it. Yes, I guess I was the
almost first one outside the company. Paul Caponigro and a few
others used it, but I'm the one that totally believed in it.
And a typical instance — in a day or so I'm getting a new pack
of film, something experimental — the Type 55, in which we think
we've made a breakthrough. Well, it's so complex technically I
couldn't begin to understand it, but I go out and make some pictures,
and the breakthrough is valid if I get a good picture and a good
negative. And does it have the scale, etc., required?
Teiser: It will have a negative?
121
Adams: This is the 55. It has the negative.*
[End Tape 5, Side 2]
[Interview V — 20 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 6, Side 1]
Mortens en
Teiser: Let me ask you one more question that has to do, indirectly, with
Group f/64. Why was William Mortensen considered so dreadful by
you and the others?
Adams: Mortensen represented about the lowest ebb of pictorialism, a very
literary approach through his titles, his mannerisms and techniques —
"abrasion tones" and matrix masks — oh, I can't think of the word —
it's things you print through that give the appearance of canvas —
it's texture screens! He was imitating some of the worst of the
Romantic painting, and using Roman letters for inscriptions, and all
kinds of manipulation. It just seemed to be as far from photography
as possible. He still is very popular in some circles, but for us
he was the anti-Christ. We stood for exactly the opposite of
everything he represented.
The interesting thing is that he had a man named Paul — I don't
know whether that's the first name or the last name — who helped him
write or actually wrote the book Mortensen on the Negative, which
has many very fine ideas in it. I was quite embarrassed later to
find that he had anticipated some of my pet ideas of technique;
controlled exposure and development of the negative, etc. (But not
the Zone System developed around 1940.) The book is very good; it's
just that the illustrations are such rather sad examples. A very
interesting thing is that in all of the history of flagrant
pictorialism, you don't find it has important museum recognition.
The pictorialists call their exhibitions "salons." When I went to
St. Louis about 1938, some of the museums might have such shows, but
now I don't think they elect to touch it because the motive is
"hobbyist." It's awfully hard to put your finger on it. You say
it's bad taste and the answer is, "Who are you to say it's bad
taste?" What is taste? What's good taste?
*Did not work out! [A. A.]
122
Adams: I don't have Mortensen's book here. I had it once; somebody stole
it. But the illustrations were just over-retouched, over-modulated.
He'd take these young nude models and grease them so they'd shine,
you know. [Laughter] And they'd be in poses —
Teiser: Didn't he write a book on the print, too?
Adams: Yes. And Monsters and Madonnas was one book he wrote. [Laughter]
Well, they were like a bad dream. They're still publishing
portfolios of Mortensen's, printing from his negatives. I guess
the P.S.A. Journal has been advertising them. I remember writing
a letter in which I suggested he negotiate oblivion. My father
persuaded me it wouldn't have the desired effect. The controversy
was kind of silly.
But anyway, his work was the exact opposite of what f/64
stood for. He would have classes down at Laguna Beach, and wealthy
capitalists from the East would come out and spend a thousand
dollars, I was told, for a weekend. And after they'd returned home,
all their work would look like his. I remember how these men would
get together, say in Chicago, and they'd hire a model for the
weekend. The model would be a platinum blond, usually wearing
nothing but high-heeled shoes. You know, that kind of thing!
[Laughter] All very decent, but all done with such conventional
poses of holding a jar on their shoulder, etc., and they'd have
names like "Dessa" or "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair." It was so
obviously phony! All made-up and greased up. It was a way of
getting highlights on nudes. In fact, some of the early photograph
ers did this sometimes in portraits to accentuate the highlights on
the face. And in the early days, they had to chalk the face,
because the film wasn't sensitive to anything but blue light, so
the face would come out over-dark. Anybody with a dark complexion
or with freckles usually had to be well powdered. Any hand would
show all kinds of spots. Anything that went to the pink, yellow or
red and would go down in value. So a lot of the daguerrotypes were
taken in rather strong, soft daylight, and probably powdered up a
bit — like in television now. On television they have to powder my
head so it won't shine and blow the tube. (That's what happened on
the moon.)
Vision and Photography
Teiser: To take you back still further into the past, let me ask you if
your motives, for your earliest photographs, were in effect the same
as your motives for taking photographs now?
123
Adams: A motive is a subconscious thing; I wouldn't know how to answer that
question. I think that in the earlier days, I was technically and
aesthetically naive, so many of my early photographs have a much
simpler and more direct statement, and all the ones that are the best
are the ones that are motivated by "instant recognition." and then
just doing them and having the technique to back it up. Which I
didn't have in the earlier days, so I'd have many an exciting vision
but zero results because I wouldn't know what to do. Now we know
much more, but at the cost of a certain spontaneity, if that's the
term you want to use. It's very hard to say this, but as you get
experienced and you see a lot of work, in any art form, you can't
help being influenced, and you automatically judge and check your
reactions to your experience.
Today I went out trying to get this picture of this very
marvelous old dead tree. It's looked the same for ten years, as if
it's going to blow over. But the sky is usually blah — it's just
nothing. Today there were some rather interesting clouds. I was
setting up the camera (and there are only a few places you can do it
for this subject) and I had to wait until those clouds behaved. See
now, in the past I would have just seen a cloud and thought, "There's
a cloud or a tree'" I wouldn't have seen the cloud-tree relationship
so precisely. And when I met Strand, I found that was one of his
basic themes — the marvelous, precise relationship of "this to that."
Trying to get a moment when all the branches in this tree were in the
cloud. If they were against blue sky they might be "lost." And you
wait until things would be right. And a couple of times it was right.
In the 1920s I wouldn't have been in the least bit aware of such
relationships. I can look back and see many photographic situations
when I really missed the moment. The idea was there, but I didn't
visualize that perfection of arrangement. Some photographers never
have that facility; others have it to an extreme degree.
There's one wonderful photograph by Stieglitz at Lake George,
the porch where the white turned post is seen adjacent to the window
and window edge. There's a thirty-second of an inch hairline
separating them. And it's this hairline that really suggests space
and organization. You see, the spectator is convinced, or feels, or
is aware of the fact that the photographer was aware of the relation
ship. And I have one, that I show in my slides, of a picture that
was done with a Polaroid at the Rochester Institute of Technology of
a building of the "Greek revival" period. Here these marvelous
columns are seen in the near/far mode in exaggerated scale. In the
first one I did, the curve of the near column broke into the
rectangular pedestal of the column in the back, and I realized when
I saw this in the Polaroid-Land print; I'd missed it in the ground
glass. All I had to do was to move the lens a little bit to the
right (two inches), which allowed it to see around the column. It
124
Adams: created a little "hairline" of separation which succeeded in
maintaining the integrity of the curved shape. The foreground
pillar wasn't lost in juxtaposition with the back shape; a "merger"
was avoided.
Those things are hard to describe verbally. And of course when
you do overlook one, then you try to justify it. You put a lot of
what they call "phrases" into the equation <o make it come out to
zero. [Laughter] Then in about a year you may look at it, and you
wonder, "Well how in the world did I ever get by with that?"
I'll see somebody's work for the first time, and that's the first
thing you see — the disturbing mergers and distractions. You look at
a print, and then you find your eyes going around to the spots and
bad edges and all the funny things a photograph can contain. You can
put your finger over one of them and say, "Well that's an interruption."
They see the problem for the first time. I can go back and get some
of my early work and do exactly the same thing — because I didn't see
the defects to begin with.
More and more as you work, you try to visualize the image ahead
of exposure. It's more difficult with the little cameras, but of
course the "saving instrument" is the single-lens reflex, because
there you really see the image — just what the lens is seeing.
Teiser: With the rangefinder camera, you partly guess at it?
Adams: The rangefinder or the viewfinder is not on lens axis. Now, if I'm
a long ways off, the parallax effect doesn't make any difference.
But if I'm sitting here with you and my eye is the lens, your hair
line, for example, is just touching the fossil. If this "eye" would
be the finder — it's usually off to the left — I'll compose you as the
finder sees it. But my lens sees you cutting in one inch on that
fossil behind you. So that the composition is not as anticipated.
The old Rolleiflex has this kind of vertical offset — you have to raise
the camera about two and a half inches to be sure the lens sees what
the finder sees.
Teiser: Doesn't the Rolleiflex have a compensating mechanism?
Adams: Oh, the new one — ^the single-lens one — but not the double, the twin-
lens design. What the twin-lens does is to tilt the viewer mechanism
so that the plane focused on comes to the center of the field. But
because the lens is taking the picture at a lower level, it can't
take care of the parallax. You're only tilting the viewing lens. The
distance of the lens from the subject determines the perspective. So
with the Hasselblad single-lens (Buperwide) I must raise the tripod
three inches to get just what I see in the finder. I compose very
accurately with the finder but must make this adjustment when working
with near/far subjects. After composing, I just crank the camera up
125
exactly the difference in distance between the camera lens and the
finder lens. Then the camera lens is seeing what the finder lens was
seeing. I can show you a picture of that in my book, Camera and Lens,
where there's quite a profound difference evident.
Flash Mishaps
Back to your earliest photographs, you were speaking the other day
of the fact that you've been able to maintain photography as a
commercial project and practice it as an art at the same time. Do
you remember the first photographs for which you were paid?
There's one very funny one that really is not of much consequence.
My next-door neighbor taught at the Chinese school in Chinatown, and
wanted a picture of her class. So, I had an old four by five camera
(my first one) and a flash gun. You used to use flash powder —
magnesium — very dangerous. You'd put a dynamite cap in this tray,
and you'd pull down the tension cord, and you'd jet the safety catch.
Many people have been blinded with this stuff firing in their faces.
I figured out how much magnesium was needed and I looked at the table
and it said, use four number three capsules. Well, I thought number
three capsules were the small capsules. They happened to be the big
capsules (each were four times the strength of the small ones). So I
loaded this pan up with magnesium powder, held it over my head, pulled
the slide from the camera, and checked if everything was ready to go.
Then you open the shutter, fire the flash, then close the shutter.
There wasn't any modern synchronization. So here were all these kids,
and the teacher said, "Now look right at Mr. Adams and smile. Now I
think it's all right, Mr. Adams." So I opened-bang-shut, and of course
there was a large explosion. I used about fifteen times the amount of
flash powder needed. Vast clouds of smoke rolled through the room,
and the kids fell under their desks. We opened the windows, and the
smoke poured out, and somebody put in a fire alarm. [Laughter] And
of course it blackened the wall and ceiling where I was standing, and
I was persona non grata. But it was understood, and forgiven in time.
The developed negative was as dense as a stove lid, it was so
damned over-exposed; about fifteen, sixteen times, I guess. But I
took it to a friend who reduced it, and I got a pretty good print out
of it. When I tried to take another picture of them, they'd
disappeared. They were just terrified!
Then I did a wedding. By that time I'd mastered the flash
technique pretty well. I was standing in a house with a nice white
colonial room, and the bride and groom were standing by the fireplace.
So I set the flash off, and as it was right under the lintel, it
blistered the paint for about four feet! [Laughter]
126
Adams: Those were the first two things I was paid for, and they were both
disasters. The clients were very kind — I offered to pay for the
lintel, but they said, "Oh no, we were going to do the room over
anyway." Which was a lie — the room was beautiful. But it was very
embarrassing.
And then another one later. I was doing the — I think it was
called the San Francisco "round table" — a gtoup of the real bosses
of San Francisco, big lawyers and financiers. They would meet at the
Palace Hotel, and have this big "round table" lunch. Fortune magazine
wanted me to photograph them. So I arranged with Mr. Lurie — Louis
Lurie was in that group and he was very helpful.
One person was very nasty, but I called another and he said, "Oh
sure, you can do it." I said, "Well, you know, it's quite a little
job. To get you all, I'll have to be set up. When the lunch is
through, you're going to have to spend maybe fifteen minutes with it."
"Well, we'll do that," said my friend.
Ron Partridge was helping me. (He is Imogen Cunningham's son.)
I got the camera all set and everything looked fine. We were using
large flash lamps. I had five lights. But at that time the only
synchronization you could get was a switch that was built in the cable
shutter release. You pressed in, opening the shutter, and also made
electrical contact. Well, it usually works all right. The contact
operates the flash.
But this was one of the last buildings in San Francisco that
still had direct current, instead of alternating current. And it
appears that when you make such a contact with direct current, you
get a flaming arc that is quite surprising when unexpected I
So here I am. I got one picture, I thought. But I said, "Well,
I'll have to get another one." So Ron tore around town — almost
arrested for speeding — to find a contact device. In the meantime,
I had a Rolleiflex, and I went up to every man with a flash gun and a
globe (I had no film in the Rolleiflex, but I thought, "I'm going to
have to keep this going") — so I go "click, click, click." One of them
said, "I've got a date." I said, "Listen, Ron will be back in a
minute. And after all, this is a Fortune magazine job I"
So back comes Ron with this new flash contact, and we got
another picture. But he handled it separately. I counted; I'd say,
"One, two, three." On "two" I opened the shutter and on "three" he
operated the flash.
Teiser: You were holding the lens open while he shot the flash globes?
Adams: I was holding the lens open. So I'd say, "One, two, bang!" — Close.
Then, "Gentlemen, you can go home."
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
127
Then they said, "Well, I want to see those little pictures you made;
I'll bet they're the best of the bunch."
I got letters later [laughter]. And I couldn't tell them. I
said, "Well, I had a disaster with that too. That was a very bad
day, gentlemen." [Laughter] That's the only way I could have held
them fifteen, twenty minutes sitting there. Such things happen to
photographers.
Did you get a good picture in the end?
Oh, yes. Fine. I still have a print somewhere,
valuable historical image.
It's a rather
Now it'd be so simple! You'd take it with available light, or
just bounce a couple of lights around the room. (It's called "bounce
light," where you direct strong lights against the wall.) You get an
effect that looks like available light. If I want to duplicate the
light in this room, the only way would be to reflect it, or "bounce"
it. And once you put a light directly on the subject you get harsh
shadows and you're in trouble. But then you were working with slow
film at 32-64 ASA at the highest. And now we work with 400, 500 and
higher.
Photographic Printing Papers
Adams: The first serious job was Parmelian Prints of the Sierras, a
portfolio of original prints. And I did a frontispiece for the Book
Club* edition of [Robinson] Jeffers's poems, which (I'm very embarrassed)
has faded. That was done in 1928 or 1929. We didn't know about fixing
and washing. The effect was probably accelerated a bit by the
character of the paper they used in the book — probably a lot of sulfur
in it.
Teiser: That brings up — how did it happen that Dassonville put the emulsion on
the Taos Pueblo book paper? Wasn't there any that was adequate?
Adams: Nothing like that. The idea was to have the paper the same throughout.
The special rag paper had to be ordered anyway, because you did not
then just go and buy such papers in book quantity.
We ordered an ample amount in rolls, and Dassonville coated a
certain number of them with his bromide emulsion.
Teiser: Could that be done now in a very expensive book?
*Book Club of California.
128
Adams: Oh yes, but you would have troubles. With rag paper and the papers
used for platinum prints, the emulsion sank into the paper fiber
rather than lying on a baryta coating. The emulsion was pretty
thick, and that gave quite a quality of "depth" quite different from
anything you see today. The papers today are baryta-coated. Baryta
is a clay, and the paper fibers are filled with this clay, making it
of course very smooth. Then the emulsion 4s deposited on top of the
clay. Then, to get different textures, such as "pebble," "silk," and
"tapestry" surfaces, the papers are put through calendars, a calendar
meaning a roll with a pattern. It could be a perfectly smooth
surface to begin with and then ruined by this treatment! Practically
all of these "pictorial" papers you see are calendared into surface
patterns. The best papers today are chemically very pure, given a
neutral baryta coating, then the various emulsions. In the emulsion,
the degree of gloss may have something to do with the starch grains
that are incorporated. If you put more starch in the emulsion, you
reduce the gloss. Now, I'm quite sure that today they have more
complex chemicals, but that's what Dassonville did — he could make a
very, very flat surface quite "dead:" no gloss at all. Or he could
leave all of the starch out, and get quite a nice brilliant finish.
He hated to leave the starch out, because he didn't like it too
brilliant. I wanted it as brilliant as I could get it.
Now what we can do today, we can take papers of that type and
get all the advantage of the natural paper color, and then we can
spray them with a neutral lacquer like Krylon or Goodman lacquer.
As far as we know, that's permanent, but putting a varnish on them
can be fatal. They used varnish in printing in earlier days, and it
yellowed.
We put a blancophor into the paper to increase the whiteness,
and that works well for daylight. Any light that has a preponderance
of blue rays in it excites these blancophors and creates a fluorescent
effect. Some of the papers have that, and there is a difference in
the whites when you look at them. But it drives the engravers crazy
because it fools them in their exposures. These emulsions are
sensitive to fluorescence and ultraviolet. And that increases
contrast. Giving the engravers a sepia-toned print is also bad,
because their films aren't sensitive to such colors.
See, when an engraver makes a color reproduction he has to make
color-separation negatives first with three color-sensitive films —
red, green, and blue or the complementaries. And they have to be
made, of course, on panchromatic film. In the old days, when they
had ordinary or orthochromatic emulsion, it was terribly difficult to
get the red. They had to fake the red sometimes, and color
reproductions could be very bad. When they get their three black and
white separation negatives, representing the three colors, then they
can transfer the images to their "plates."
129
Writing the Basic Photography Books
Adams: Going into reproductions, I did an article for the London magazine,
Studio. They liked the article and asked me if I would do the book
on photography in their "How to Do It" series, in which they had
Levon West, the etcher, who later left etching and took up photography
and was known as Ivan Dmitri. He was a pretty good etcher. His book
on etching, I understand, is excellent. He was a fair photographer.
Well, I did this book, and now we're thinking of reprinting it
just as an historical object, because it was at the time one of the
most concise works on straight photography.
Teiser: What is it called?
Adams: It's called Making a Photograph. The first edition was in 1935. I
asked for good reproductions, and they agreed. The plates were
beautifully made, printed on very smooth paper, and tipped in — which,
of course, is an ideal way to do it. It gives the illusion of being
originals, but if one corner gets dog-eared, or if people lift them
out, you know, you can get into trouble.
Now there's no need of that at all with modern double offset.
You just print text and images on the same paper. You use smooth
paper, and then you can apply lacquer with what is called tint block
on the press. Lacquer increases brilliancy.
But Making a Photograph in 1935 was the only book of its kind
known that was quite that simple and had anything like those repro
ductions. They were simply marvelous.
I remember going into Chicago one time, waiting for a train,
and went to a big bookshop, where there were a lot of photographic
books, and I pointed to mine and I said, "How's that going?" He
said, "Oh, it's going fairly well. It's written by one of those
highbrow Englishmen." And I didn't have the heart to tell him that
I was the author.
It's interesting that a photographer living in San Francisco
would have his first book published in London, or the first book of
any consequence in the instructional sense. Now that I say that, it
sounds very conceited, but still it has a function that's very, very
good, and there would be very little in it that would be changed.
Of course it was done long before the zone system appeared, so there
was no real analysis of exposure development and control.
Teiser: Your Morgan & Morgan Basic Photo series —
130
Adams: First there was Camera and Lens — Book One. That's now been revised;
it's a rather handsome 304-page book. Now I'm working on revising
the others — The Print. The Negative, Natural-Light Photography, and
Artificial-Light Photography. And then Book Six is the Polaroid
manual [Polaroid Land Photography Manual^. The revised edition will
probably come out, if all goes well, very soon. But as soon as a
book's out, they've got a new process! The first edition of that
was very bad, because PolaColor came out right after the book was
published; I knew there was to be color, but I had no idea when it
was coming, and they couldn't tell me. So we had a filler inserted
afterward.
And now the new process, the SX-70 system, which is a fantastic
achievement — that will be in the revision. God knows what else
Land's got up his sleeve.
Teiser: It must have been hard to sit down and write.
Adams: Well, I'm very glib. I need an awful lot of editing, but I'm very
glib. When I get going I can write very fast — quantities.
Teiser: But those books are so precise.
Adams: Yes, but if you know your subject you can write. The difficulty is
checking to be sure you have all the details right, and when you
read your own manuscript you find that you often overlooked important
things.
I got a letter today. I mentioned a tripod number, 403 733 A,
Goldcrest. Well, this man writes, "There isn't any such tripod.
The Goldcrest people say it probably means 337 A." What it was, you
see, I'd put down number 403 337 A, and the typesetter made a
mistake in his composing machine, and I didn't catch that in time.
I'm going to have now an editor that will do nothing in the world
except check word for word and number for number.
Teiser: Did anyone read over them?
Adams: Yes, but not the way it should have been. Not a technical person.
I had another instance just the other day. A man wrote, "In
your warm-tone Glycin formula [page 14, The Print] , you say 'potassium
bromide, four grams', and right under it you say 'potassium bromide,
40 cc at 10 percent solution'." I never caught that. It should have
said "or" because that's the same thing. He said, "Why did you want
to put that in? Why didn't you just use more bromide?" Of course,
anybody who knew about it would realize they were the same, but
the word "or" is left out.
131
Adams: You say that's easy, but there's hardly a scientific book that comes
out that doesn't have a page of errata in it, and some have ten or
twelve pages. I've seen one very complicated thing on the photo-
physical chemistry of photography that had four or five pages of
errata — slight changes of formula, etc. And of course unless you're
a mathematician, you wouldn't realize it, but when a mathematician
tries to work something out and he finds something wrong, he is
disturbed!
Teiser: When you work on such technical things, do you take whole days, or
do you take a whole period when you don't work on photographs?
Adams: Well, realistically I should just cold-bloodedly set aside a month
for this and a month for that , but sometimes I go at it for several
days, and then suddenly the curtain rings down. I've completely
lost the facility to think. I'm loaded with work continuously. So I
go on to do something else. And when I did the book on the University
[Fiat Lux] , I couldn't stay more than three or four days in one place
because after that I just stopped "seeing." I could say, "Oh, I have
to do a picture of that building," and it meant nothing. So I'd
"pogo-stick" to another campus and then have several days of
excitement, and then all of a sudden you don't see any more and you
must move on.
The Zone System
Teiser: Your writings on the Zone System —
Adams: There are so many versions of the Zone System. They all come out
right, but the best one, the clearest one, is in the Polaroid Land
[Photography] Manual. People buy the Manual just for that, and I
never realized that. It is a kind of distillation and applies the
principles step by step, in much clearer style than the other
expositions.
Teiser: You said that Minor White's article or pamphlet on the Zone System
was an extension of your work?
Adams: He has a booklet. He's doing a new one, which I haven't seen yet,
which goes into the mystical interpretation of photography. It
worries me a little because I think he's inclined to go off the beam
and be inexplicable (is that the word to use?). It's a form of
"camera as therapy," and I don't know; between you and me, it's not
entirely healthy, it's too mystical. It's a constant justification
and explanation, where photography should be a rather simple thing.
132
Adams: But he has some very good exercises, and details for working out the
Zone System, for students. I find it very complex, and he makes a
few errors, which I think are deplorable. It isn't whether he agrees
with me. I didn't invent the Zone Syst<fa. I simply codified
sensitometry. If you want to juggle with it and say, "Well, you
know, you can't print Zone I, so we'll start with Zone II," that
isn't scientific. That isn't sensitometry, you see. [Laughter] I
can't say, "Look, you're hurting my system. You can't do that." I
just say, "It's not right. It doesn't stand the test; you have to
begin one end of the exposure scale at Zone I."
There's a man in Sacramento who thinks he can get by with five
zones. Well, if he wants to do it, okay. But it's still not right
in sensitometry. The values that we can refer to with confidence
are in geometric ratios. And if you know anything about lenses,
you know how the stops of lenses progress from, say, f/8, f/11, f/16,
and so on. The point is that the f/8 means the focal ratio of the
diameter of the stop to the focal length of the lens at infinity.
So f/8 means the diameter of that stop is one-eighth of its focal
length at infinity. So therefore f/8 is a factor number that relates
to any focal length lens, one inch to twenty inches. F/8 will always
be a stop in that ratio, and will always transmit the same amount of
light, no matter what the size of the lens is.
Then you go on f/11, f/16, so you think f/16 would be one-half
of f/8, that it would let in one-half the light. But you're working
with the area of a circle, and that means f/16 is letting in one-
fourth the amount of light f/8 does, because a circle one-half inch
across has only one-fourth the area of a circle one inch across. To
set one-half the exposure you multiply eight by the square root of
two, 1.414 (here's geometry again) and then you get f/11. 3. You
actually progress at 11.3, 16, 22.6, 32, 45.2 — those would be the
exact numbers, but we approximate them by just saying 8, 11, 16, and
22, etc.
Well, some people don't know what a square root is. They know
what a square is but not a root. It's just basic geometry. Now,
there used to be the old U.S. system, which meant "universal system,"
and they started at f/16 being the same as U.S. 16. And then, f/8
passed two times, f/4 passed four times, f/2 passed eight times the
amount of light, with ascending numbers like 16, 32, 64, 128, 256.
Every one was doubled, and it meant 2X, 4X, 8X, 16X, and 32X instead
of 4X, 16X, 64X, 256X, etc.
The Europeans, instead of having f/8 as the base, used f/9 — but
the same thing. You get f/12.7, f/18, f/25— the ratio is always the
same. And ASA speed numbers are 64, 125, 256, and between each of
those are two other numbers — like 32, 40, 50, 64; 100, 125, 256.
And if you once get that geometric idea in your mind, fine! But
133
Adams: meters come out with exposure values with arithmetic numbers, but
which have geometric significance — all very confusing. On the Weston
5 meter, number twelve was equal to 100 candles per square foot,
number thirteen equal to 200, number fourteen equal to 400. So in
reading these numbers, you really have to think geometrically. But
many people don't think, they just take for granted a number on the
dial. They put it on the "arrow" and they read the exposure. You're
just pressing buttons without any knowledge of what's happening, and
I think that's very serious. And the exposure formula is so
absolutely simple once you know it. You don't need any dials; you
take the readings of your subject.
A typical example would be if I want to make a picture in
Yosemite, and it's a contrasty day, but I want to get a tone value
III in the tree shadows, and those tree shadows read 6.5 c/ft^. I
put 6.5 c/ft on Zone HI, go to 13 on IV and 25 on V, which is the
"geometric mean." So the exposure is 1/25 of a second at the lens
stop number, which is the equivalent of the square root of the ASA
speed number. And people collapse. And then you try to explain
again and say, "Well, that's nothing. Now you know you have 25
opposite V, so that's 1/25 of a second; that's simple. And if you're
using ASA 64, the square root is eight, so it would be 1/25 at f/8"
(that's your base exposure; you don't need a dial). Or if you're
using 125 ASA, that would be f/11, or ASA 250 would be f/16. You
just memorize a little table of squares. Kodachrome at 25 would be
f/5. The whole idea of photographic exposure is really a geometric
system. That doesn't mean that you don't work between stops to
balance and control. The Polaroid electric eye camera is extremely
sensitive, and you don't think of any f stops or shutter speed there;
you know it's calibrated to render a single surface luminance with
a value VI. And there's reason for that. It automatically registers
the values in this infinite series of adjustments, but you can make
it lighter or darker, according to the contrast of the scene, by
using the lighten-darken (L.D.) control. But the theory is exactly
the same .
Meters and Automation
Adams: In the earlier days, we did everything "by grace and by God" and by
tables. I had a little meter — a tint meter — that would use sensitive
paper and there would be two reference colors, light and dark green,
or light and medium green. And you'd hold it in the light and count
seconds until the sensitive paper was the same color as one of the
reference colors. But of course it's very hard to do, to be exact,
because your eye doesn't like to make that kind of decision, you see,
134
Adams: especially if there's an edge. But you count, say, fifteen seconds
and then you relate that to some mark, and you set the exposure. It
was fairly accurate if your eyes weren't too tired.
*
Then I had extinction meters, where you look in and see a wedge,
and you look at the scene through it, and you read the highest number
you can see — it might be six, it might be fifteen. The tragedy was,
if you came out of a very bright light you'd see a very low number,
and then the longer you looked at it, the higher and higher and
higher the number you'd see. [Laughter] So you had to sort of balance
that out. If I was sitting here now, I could look in this room and
I'd trust what I read. But if I were looking out at the ocean for a
while and then tried to read in the room, it would take me about two
minutes before I was confident that I was seeing the correct number.
Then the Weston meter came out, which used the selenium cell,
which is a self-generating cell — selenium on one side. As light
strikes this material, it creates energy and works an ammeter. The
Weston cell was a great invention, and it's used in many, many ways,
and it's probably one of the most accurate and dependable of all the
meter devices. The only thing that can go off is the little
electrical ammeter, which is working on a very low current. The
current is just generated in the cell entirely by light. There's no
batteries in the meter at all.
Then the next step was the cadmium sulphide cell, which is
extremely sensitive and is operated with a very small battery. But
it is inclined to be very erratic. It has to be primed. You have to
show it the light for a little while. That's the average cell,
although the one Dr. Land uses is apparently "capsulated" and gives
immediate response.
And now most of the meters out on the market — Weston Nine and
the Gossen meter and the Pentax and all those in the cameras — are
based on little sulphide cells.
Then there's the standard visual photometer, like the S.E.I.
meter (made in England). That's probably the best thing of its kind
made within the price; you can get photometers up to four figures.
But this one has a battery and a light, and you adjust this light to
a fixed brightness, which properly illuminates the comparison cube.
Now you match the light from the scene through a little telescope by
operating the main rheostat until it matches the fixed brightness
spot. That gives you the photometric measurement. But that is using
a fixed value to match — not like the extinction meter, which depended
entirely on whether the eye could see a number or not in a dark field.
The S.E.I, meter has a diameter of field of view of one degree.
They've increased it a little bit lately — it's one and a half now, I
think. So that means I can take the shadow on that tree trunk, and
135
Adams: I can take the white rock, and the highlight on that lamp, and the
white picture frame with the picture on the white mat from here, you
see. You just put the dot on it, and turn this thing until the values
match. That's really a great invention, because it gives you command
of what you're doing. All on the assumption that your shutter and
your diaphragm are correct and that your film and developer are
properly functioning.
[End Tape 6, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 6, Side 2]
Teiser: Have you had any experience with the light cell in the camera?
Adams: That's a new development which is primarily a gadget to sell cameras
to indulgent and wealthy amateurs. It's extremely clever and many
are extremely well made. If it is a meter which averages the light
coming in over the entire field — it's like holding a Weston meter up
to the field of view. If it's a spot meter, then you have the
inevitable selection of what you point it at, because the spot
doesn't know; it will respond to the tree shadow, and to the water,
and will control the exposure accordingly. I've made tests with the
new Leicaflex, and it was extremely accurate — a beautiful piece of
equipment — but I still had to make up my mind, putting the spot on a
snowbank or on a tree, and the exposure will always be on the
geometric mean.
Now they have new meters which are a combination of the two,
which probably is a little better. But the camera can't make the
aesthetic selection if it is purely automatic. It can approximate
it. But as 90 percent of the pictures taken are of people, most
cameras and systems are calibrated to flesh tones. So if you point
this box, this finder with the spot meter, at the skin of a person,
you will get a reading which will put that on the proper point on the
exposure scale. God help you for anything else, because everything
you point it at will come out at the same point on the scale.
I went through this whole complex scene in Yosemite with my
photometer, and the Leica meter was very accurate. But still, that
was just the meter. Now what do I do_ with it? Do I want to place
that tree shadow on Zone V? I might want it at Zone II. Where do
I put it? So the only way you can control that situation is to set
your ASA and set the related lens stop. You then control the shutter
speed dial until the needles match, and then you have the candles per
square foot.
Teiser: So it's more trouble to override the automatic system than not?
136
Adams: Oh, it's terrible. It's much better to have a separate meter, read
it and set the camera accordingly. But then some automatic cameras
don't like to be "overridden." I've se^n people with cameras that
cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars completely frustrated; they
had no idea what was happening, and they were getting terrible
results. The camera was doing the best it could — beautiful optics —
but the user had no knowledge of what to do.
Teiser: I suppose there will be a whole lot of people who adapt themselves
to the automatic camera.
Adams: Oh, there are now, yes, to a certain extent. But see, where the
Polaroid is so far ahead of them is that with the Polaroid electric
eye receptor you have the ability to make it lighter or darker. Now
that's not too easy in the standard camera. You have to change stops
or shutter speeds. Well, what are you changing, you see? In the
Polaroid you can change two stops to light and one to dark. They're
going to try to get it two stops each way. And that's a very
intricate little system, but they can put it on their very cheap
cameras. And when you press the shutter it releases a certain amount
of current that controls the electronic mechanism.
Now we are getting those cameras that have electric drives. The
Hasselblad electric is just simply winding the film and setting the
shutter. It doesn't control the exposure, thank God. But you can
put it on sequence, take a picture every second, or you can just
press the button and have one image. They sent me one, but really,
I still have enough strength to wind the film! [Laughter] But it
really is wonderful when you have these 70-millimeter magazines with
many, many exposures to make in sequence. You're doing, say, a
series of portraits, and you're talking, and you just press this
button, and press and press; it's "sh-sh-sh," like that. But that's
not exposure reading; it's something else.
Now some equipment has electronic shutter control, and they're
having a little trouble. They're awfully complex, you know. Polaroid
is the only one that, so far, has been able to make these things in
quantity. Everybody else has had trouble. I guess Kodak is all
right with the Instamatic. And they use the same general principle.
Unfortunately, that principle of electronic exposure was not patent-
able — not controllable by Polaroid. The thing was patented many,
many years ago, and it's now in the public domain. It wasn't used in
shutters. It was used in scientific instruments. It was used first
in engraving, so no matter what happened to the fluctuating arc lights,
the exposure would always be the same. And this was called an
accumulator. There would be a little meter on a copy board in the
engraving camera. They'd set the exposure, say, for three minutes,
and then the meter would take care of it and balance all lighting
variations. All these things are so interesting technically, and
they all had their roots in various applications, long before they
were thought of in actual field camera work.
137
Technique in Relation to Aesthetics
Teiser: When you were a youngster, were you interested in optical instruments?
Adams: Oh, yes, I loved instruments — always been an instrument lover.
Teiser: Were you interested in your father's astronomical instruments?
Adams: Yes, oh yes. Of course, we only had a small telescope,
go up to Lick Observatory, see the big telescope.
We used to
The thing to get over is this: that I think my contribution,
if there is one (the creative work is something which only critics
of photographic history can say whether I did any pictures of
importance or not — I'm conceited enough to think I did a few) — the
main thing is that, as far as I know, I'm the first one that
codified technique in relation to aesthetics. You see, now there 've
been many, many people who've codified technique in relation to just
facts — exposure and instrumental control and all that, and far
beyond anything I've done in physical accuracy. You know, when
you're making photographs in terms of nanoseconds and tracing spark
gaps, and doing things from the U-2 plane with slit-shutter cameras
at sixty or seventy thousand feet or higher (and you can see gravel
on the railroad beds) — these are optical achievements that are
infinitely beyond me.
But as far as I know, and as far as other people know, I'm the
first one to have said you can control exposure and development in
relation to aesthetics, not just in relation to the photometric
equivalent. And the photometric equivalent means the light measure
ment which has the proportionate values of the subject, getting a
negative, and then, with light passing through the negative, getting
the value equivalent of the negative on the print. It's called the
photometric equivalent, and it has nothing to do with expression. It
relates to an approximate simulation of reality. And, in aesthetics,
we attempt departures from reality, whether we do them by trick and
by guess in the darkroom or whether we do them all ahead of time by
visualization .
I remember one of Minor White's great achievements. By the way,
he's one of the great photographers, and I have the utmost affection
and respect for him, so when I criticize what he did with the Zone
System, that just means the difference of technical application.
But he did a series of photographs of performances of Ibsen's Ghosts
in San Francisco, and in doing this, he wanted to give the nonliteral
feeling of the unworldliness of the characters. It was done very
simply by just using the Zone System, placing the skin values very
high. So all these people in the images are white — very pale, very
138
Adams: unreal. And then, you see, it's not just value. If you go up the
top of the curve, it flattens off, and your contrasts become less,
so the face would become smoother, much higher in value, much less
defined. But you can visualize all tha*t. So that is, I think, the
contribution which is now being pretty well accepted.
Science and the Creative Photographer
Adams: I had the funny comment of a photo technician from, I think it was,
Eastman. He says, "You know I'm up there in that pretty hard-boiled
lab, and we're working with some of the most complex photochemistry
and physics that's going today but," he says, "when I want to know
something about photography, I read your books." [Laughter] I said,
"Well, thank you. I understand the difference." You should see
sometime one of the technical manuals! You know, it's just up in the
domain of higher mathematics and advanced physical chemistry. But
everything has its place, and that's what enables them to make the
materials that we people can throw around in a so-called creative
sense.
Even at this late date, they are not absolutely sure what
happens in the formation of the latent image. You've got a silver
crystal, which is a nice-looking triangular crystal — different sizes —
I forget the name of it — it's got bevels and edges, but it's primarily
a triangle. And that is silver halide, composed of silver bromide,
chloride or iodide in different proportions. And then, light strikes
that crystal and changes it to the "latent image." It's a matter of
the quantum theory, if you want to really describe it, which I can't.
It relates to the production of "electron holes" in this crystal, and
when this condition is established by the action of light, the
crystal is then developable, and these holes then attract developing
agents, and the silver crystal is reduced to metallic silver. That's
a very crude description. A scientist would probably be aghast — but
I mean, that's about what happens.
So then when you develop your image, your image is metallic
silver, but there's all kinds of silver halide still left in the
emulsion. Then you put the negative or print into the hypo bath (the
sodium thiosulphate solution) which removes unexposed and undeveloped
silver halides remaining. So you have left the pure silver image,
which in the electron microscope appears as filaments — looks like
seaweed. The negative in principle is about the same as the print.
But with the Polaroid print, instead of having a comparatively coarse
grained image like a conventional print, it's ionic silver that's
deposited. It's attracted across the developer to the receiving
sheet, and the positive image appears. These of course are too small
139
Adams: to be seen, even in the electron microscope. But the ionic silver
depositions (and there is a kind of a structure), when that gets too
compact you have something like silver plating, and the surface of
the print will show what they call "gilding," a metallic sheen.
So if you take a four by five print — conventional print — and
you could consider the surface area of all those crystals, it would
probably be as big as this room. If you took a Polaroid print and
could lay out the surface of all the particles, it would probably
total an acre. And that is why it's extremely susceptible to any
chemical contamination, because of this large surface, which picks
up sulphur and other chemicals. Silver loves sulphur! Sulphur does
not "degenerate" silver, it's just silver going to its most stable
compound form. That's why an ordinary photomural is usually toned
to an "egg yolk brown," sepia tone. It is really silver sulphide,
and that's permanent. The problem is to keep plain silver from turn
ing to silver sulphide. When a picture fades, like mine (and many
others') did in the earlier days, it was because the print was in a
condition to combine with sulphur.
Teiser: Why in the world did people make sepia prints?
Adams: I think largely for that reason — they were relatively permanent.
Besides they weren't just that ugly old black-and-white; they had a
romantic [laughter] — a romantic color to them. There are all stages
of tone. You can get a blue-black and a neutral black and a brown-
green black and a selenium purple-brown black. My prints are toned
to get away primarily from this peculiar green-brownish tone (there's
more green in it than anything else) of the commercial paper. That
seems to be the natural tone of the silver image.
Teiser: I think of these big brown Southern Pacific photographs.
Adams: They had to be that color because there was no way they could process,
at that time, without toning, with any permanence. Sepia toning was
done by bleaching and redevelopment. There are "matrices" in the
gelatin. The gelatin is a very strange, stable substance and keeps
its form even in submicroscopic pattern. And there are sulphur and
silver nuclei left therein. They're invisible, so the print after
bleaching has practically no image at all. And then you redevelop,
and the image that was silver before has now become silver sulphide.
And silver sulphide is inert. I suppose some things would affect it —
stains, and all that — but it's basically permanent. Very seldom you
see a brown sepia print that's really turning or fading.
Teiser: I was wondering, when you were speaking yesterday about the develop
ment of the Land process: I remember, oh I suppose in the thirties,
at Fisherman's Wharf, there used to be a man with a camera, and you
would wait for a couple of minutes, and he would give you kind of a
funny little picture on metal —
140
Adams: Tintype.
Teiser: — instantly.
Adams: Well, the machine was pretty clever. I don't really know the
process. It's not very permanent.
Teiser: No. The one I have has faded.
Adams: It could be — but, well, you have several methods — reversal processes,
for instance. I just can't tell you what they used.
Teiser: I think it had been used for many years before that —
Adams: Oh, many years. It's an old, old process. But it isn't a very
attractive process. It's very dull, whereas the daguerreotype is
very beautiful. I think the name for a daguerreotype, "mirror with
a memory," is one of the great verbal descriptions.
But you see, one of the problems we have in portraiture is
satisfying the subject, and the daguerreotype was extremely success
ful in portraiture because it gave a mirror image. When you looked
at the daguerreotype, you saw yourself as you look to yourself in
the mirror. And sometimes we look very different to others than we
do in the mirror. I can't see myself at all except in the mirror.
Now, when I see a picture of myself, I sometimes say, "Well, that's
not what I see every morning when I'm putting Vitalis on what's left
of my hair." [Laughs]
I must say, there have been a multitude of processes developed
in the history of photography. And now it's boiled down to the
processes as you see them, plus the fact that we're getting into
some forms of dye or electrostatic photography like Xerox. And
every laboratory is just working twenty-nine hours a day trying to
get a nonsilver process, but for some strange reason, way back in the
1830s, silver halides were found to be the only practical light-
sensitive material. And when you speak of platinum or palladium
processes, those salts are not sensitive in themselves, but they
ride on a ferric process. This process is very slow, but it can
produce beautiful image qualities.
The Polaroid is a total miracle and is not just one thing; it
is a system of very many, very complex processes which are
constantly advancing, changing and adapting.
I wish you could see the patent for the new camera in process.
You can buy one. I don't recall how many pages it is, but there's
about sixteen pages listing the organic compounds that can be used.
An interesting thing is that there were two hundred copies ordered
141
Adams: by Eastman Kodak Company! [Laughter] Perhaps they're trying to
find some loophole in these patents, you see, where they can get
through. Polaroid has a large staff of patent experts.
Polaroid started out with a silver sulphide image, a brown
image, and then advanced that to black and white. And they
achieved two hundred speed. I don't really know the details, and
I'm not authorized to say if I did know, but I know that the process
is constantly being refined year by year. Then they achieved four
thousand speed! Land was out in San Francisco before we moved down
here, and he had an experimental twenty- thousand-speed film! We
were taking pictures by starlight, out the window, at a fifth of a
second. They weren't very good quality prints, but they were
informative images. Now they have a film that's on the market that
is used with the oscilloscope — ten thousand ASA speed, and that
enables the recording of very faint, really very faint, images.
For some reason, the quantum theory limits the "speed" of
emulsions (ASA rating) to about forty thousand. Without electronic
image amplification you couldn't go possibly beyond forty thousand.
But a whole new world opens up with the vidicom tube; modern
X-ray technique is a fine example of that application. Now they're
using it in astronomy and seeing things that are totally beyond
visual and ordinary photographic recording. So maybe one of the
next developments will be a light amplification system, where your
image will be produced in numbers, like in the Mars pictures. They
don't come back in pictures, they come back in a continuous series
of numbers. And there's an image put together, and it's about one
or two centimeters square, I think.
The Mars system is so marvelous! The image is made photo
graphically; then a scanner moves across. It has 128 levels of
intensity, which are translated as numbers. They're given a code
number on the tape. Now, when the scanner reverses direction it's
sending in the response of a lot of other instruments on board. The
next cross-scan is of the image. So what they get here is equivalent
to an endless tape with numbers. Every so often, those are put
together, and they become a stack of strips. Then they're translated
into density values, and you have your picture.
From the moon we had actual pictures, but from Mars we have
nothing but numbers which make pictures so sharp and remarkable that
it is almost unbelievable.
142
Sensitometry as a Creative Tool
Adams: Well, anyway, this whole idea is of scientific interest — I think I
should clarify that statement. In no way could I be labeled a
scientist or, in the classic sense, a technician. I don't know
enough and don't have the capacity to use the technical facts of
this world in any other way but applying them to creative work. So
the emphasis should be, I think, in the fact that in codifying the
Zone System, I made sensitometry available as a tool for creative
people who wish to express themselves or depart from reality; but it
is at a very simple level. In other words, there are several words
that are different: "approximate" and "precise" and "exact." Most
people approximate; I think I approach the precise, but I can't
presume to be exact — there's too many decimal points involved!
[Laughter] And if I use the square root of 2 — it is 1.41422, and
that's far beyond the precision I need. Well, 1.4 would be enough
for all practical purposes, like developing. Take 8 and multiply it
by 1.4 — it's closer to 11.3 in reality, because when you multiply by
1.414 you get 11.312. So how precise do you have to be?
So I mean I mustn't be represented as a scientist or a real
technician. I'd like to be known as an artist and teacher but, you
know, never go beyond the logical bounds. But I don't know whether
I've violated the original theme that you presented.
Teiser: It's all pertinent.
Adams: Most of the creative photographers in the world never knew anything
about the Zone System or ever used anything like it. They're
entirely empirical in approach. And you learned by trial and error
that under certain conditions you exposed a certain way. Sometimes
you modified development, if you knew what you'd done and could
rectify some of the errors in the darkroom — which can be done to an
amazing degree. So we can't say Edward Weston or Stieglitz or Strand
were questionable photographers because they didn't understand sensi
tometry! But from the point of view of efficiency, getting a
negative that I want, I can run rings around them, and I do not
"bracket" my exposures.
This awful word, "bracket;" in color pictures you bracket one
or two stops, just to be sure. Well, my ego won't let me do that.
I know what the values are; I know where they fit on the scale. If
I have to take pictures of an important subject — a photograph that I
know is valuable — I'll take several duplicate pictures, but they'll
all be the same exposure.
In the time of Group f/64, I would say practically everyone was
working very empirically. I don't think anybody was really control
ling anything. Weston went to Mexico, and he learned the lighting
143
Adams: situations, and he probably had many failures in the beginning. He
probably had failures in the field, or at least he had darkroom
struggles. I did; everybody did.
It was around '36, '38 that [Beaumont] Newhall sent me a
clipping about the S.E.I, meter. I was laid up with the flu. He
sent me an article, a clipping on it, and I immediately ordered one
by telephone, and I thought, "This is it!" At that time we were
working on the Zone System, and the S.E.I, meter was the thing that
really pinpointed it.
I'd like to say that any intelligent person, in an hour's time
of serious discussion, can learn the whole basis of the Zone System.
It's that simple. We had kids — students in the California School of
Fine Arts in San Francisco — in six weeks time they could photograph
anything I could think up. I don't say they'd make a great picture,
but they could photograph — could expose correctly. They went into
reciprocity failure tests. That's another domain. It's pretty
complicated. And they tried many different developers for special
effects. And at the end of six weeks they had a very fine mechanical
mastery. Now what they did beyond that, that's something else.
Teiser: When you were developing the Zone System — in the mid-thirties, was
it--?
Adams: Well, no, it was when I started teaching in the Art Center School,
Los Angeles.
Teiser: Early forties?
Adams: Well, late thirties and forties. I don't know the dates.
Fred Archer and I worked out the Zone System, and we got the
Weston meter representative very excited, and he said, "I'll
mimeograph you a lot of your charts. I think they're very important."
We had several charts — exposure charts, which are standard; they
haven't changed any. And then we had density charts — curve reading
charts — where you have coordinates on which to plot values and relate
them to zones.
One time I remember the students, everybody working along hard
and everything coming out wrong. We had forgotten to include Zone V
on the chart, which meant a factor of 2 was omitted! Well, [laughter]
those things can happen.
I found out that serious people want to know how to control, and
many people tie themselves in a knot wanting to know how to begin.
The ones that always give me a real pain in the neck are the ones
who say, "I can judge the light." I said, "Well, anywhere?" "Oh yes,
anywhere. I never need the meter. I don't need a meter."
144
Adams: Well, it's physiologically and psychologically impossible. It's
just like saying I can judge your weight by looking at you. I can
make an empirical guess by looking at a lot of other people like you.
But it's a pompous thing to say. If I didn't have a meter, I would
have to bracket exposures. I would have to make a guess and then go
above and below it just to be sure. I don't really know light values.
I know in Yosemite, from ten in the morning until four in the
afternoon, the shadows in the trees on a clear day are so much, and
I know where granite is on the scale, and so on. But in New England
I fell flat on my face — missed all the light there. At Santa Fe I
again fell flat on my face — misjudged the light. Had to make tests
and find out what it was in general. Hawaii was the same, although
by that time I knew how to use meters. When I went to Hawaii I
wouldn't trust them. I mean, I'd say, "Well, this can't be." And
then I'd give in and say, "Oh, I must trust the meter. It was a
good meter, and I was just applying experience as well, which was
all right.
Teiser: The quality of light is so curious, isn't it? We were just discussing
it as we drove along.
Adams: Well, the quality of light — in the early days when 0' Sullivan and
others worked in the Southwest (in fact, anybody at that time) — the
films accepted only blue light. You don't get the optimum amount of
blue until about nine-thirty or ten o'clock in the morning, and it
begins to go at four o'clock and the light becomes redder and redder.
With blue-sensitive plates this posed a real problem.
But, I don't think that these early people could work except
between ten o'clock and two or three o'clock with any assurance.
Then when the orthochromatic film came in, which accepted green,
you had more leeway working with longer wavelengths. With ortho-
chromatic film, you could still get into trouble with late or early
light.
The light now (6:15 p.m. Pacific daylight savings time) —
it's deficient in blue. It's all right; I can still get by with
panchromatic (red-sensitive film) without much difficulty. But you
wait until seven o'clock. In the old days, even with orthochromatic
film you'd have to multiply the exposure four or five times. But you
never really knew how red it was. We now have color temperature (°K)
meters to inform us of this quality of light. The eye-mind complex,
being an absolute miracle of construction, adapts to differences of
color temperature. You're not aware of the light now being very
much of red quality.
You take a white piece of paper and put it under a tungsten
light — it appears white; you take it outside in the sun or shade and
it also appears white. The difference would be apparent when you
could have both together. The best example I ever had of that was
145
Adams: Mills College Art Gallery. I went over there with Albert Bender to
see some big show, and this whole gallery was illuminated with
tungsten light. We were in there, and everything was perfectly
normal — white labels, white shirts. But I looked out the door,
looking out into the woods, and they were absolutely turquoise. We
call it cyan now. I mean, here was a bluish-green gorgeous thing,
and I thought, "What's happening?" And I went out, and as soon as
I'm out, it's perfectly normal — they're green. And I looked back
into the room, and it's gold. The eye has adaptability which the
film does not. In this case there was opportunity for direct
comparison.
Now, I'd be conscious of a direct physical reflection of blue
light from the sky, or red light, or orange in your dress, or
similar things. I can see a little orange light on your face from
your dress. But a color film would just accentuate that — the shadow
might be distractingly orange.
So all this matter of visualization relates to seeing the image
you want, but you have to also take into consideration all the
idiosyncracies of the light itself, and the meter and film sensitivity.
That's why photometers are important. You take any Weston cell or a
CdS [cadmium sulphide] cell, and over an hour or so from now its
response to changing daylight differs. Whereas a comparison photometer
is something else, because if the spot looks bluish, you just put in
a light filter that can control its response (as well as that of the
film). In fact, my S.E.I, photometer is a practical color temperature
meter if I have somebody to hold a compensating filter in front of it
while I am using it. (Takes two hands to operate it!)
Suppose I wanted to copy a painting in a gallery, and I know
the light is tricky, and I know what's going to happen, and I have
to do it in color photography. If I have a fifty-dollar color meter,
which will give me readings in mirads, etc., I can figure out what
filters to use, etc. But I can take this S.E.I, meter and look at
the gray card, and if the spot looks yellow I may use a variety of
number eighty series filters — or other filters — held in front of the
meter. And I may find a filter which makes the spot neutral and
that's the filter that may correct the film for color. Because I
match the color with the fixed brightness which is already filtered,
for both tungsten or daylight, by selecting one of two built-in
filters in the meter. If I'm using tungsten balanced film, I set in
the tungsten filter.
So there's a strange dichotomy — the principles are rather
complex, but the devices we have to control them are fairly simple,
and the photographers who use them are, 90 percent of the time,
extremely dumb, because they don't take advantage of the devices
we've got. [Laughter] And then when they make a mistake of exposure
146
Adams: or development, they immediately justify it by making some further
mistake in the printing, or maybe trying to pull something out of the
hat by processing experimentally. And sometimes, of course, miracles
happen. You know, you could really get a bad negative and neverthe
less get a print that might have exciting qualities.
But I'm just not built to accept what is called the accidental.
Contemporary Images
Teiser: I was looking at photographs in the latest U.S. Camera magazine this
morning by "coming" young photographers. And one of them was a
picture of a whole bunch of people standing lined up in a field and
all their heads were blurred — their bodies weren't, their heads were.
I didn't take time to read what was so good about it.
Adams: Well, the tragedy there is sociological. I mean, our whole society
or government, or whatever we have, hasn't given anybody any challenge
to think. Everything is mechanistic, technical. Thinking is all done
in Route 128 outside Cambridge, or up here in Sunnyvale, at those big
research centers. Everything is carefully thought out, but the
social situation is very unclear. And most people have nothing to
say. So they're inventing symbols. And they'll make a photograph,
and then say, "Well, this means something to me." Now, perhaps we
can say of this lineup (I haven't seen the picture), "This would be
an unusual approach to the certainty of the body and the uncertainty
of the mind." You'd be surprised what is read into these things,
into picture after picture! Or a picture done in Rochester of George
Eastman's house porch. It's just a square picture of a dark column —
frantically bad.
Jerry Uelsmann has really made a great advance because he's
combined negatives and created true fantasies. Personally, I find
they wear thin after awhile, because the whole thing is a bit limited.
And then you begin to think of what Dorothea Lange did in interpreting
a human situation. And of course what all the great painters of the
Renaissance did in the religious area — you have to remember that
there were no other themes in Western art at that time but the
Christian religion, and the portraits of a few potentates and princes.
The art that was done outside that field is miniscule. If you're an
art historian, you may correct me — there may be some done, but as you
move on later, then you get into the genre of the Dutch and landscapes
and the Barbizon school. But art always fails if there isn't a theme.
That's the trouble now with abstract expressionism. It did its
job, and it was wonderful when it did it. It was part of a protest,
and I think art now is at the very lowest level it's been. And that's
147
Adams: why they're painting paintings as big as this room. They're trying
to regain some grandeur by just going to big paintings. But how
many great painters can you think of today? Well, I can think of
[Georgia] O'Keeffe, who's still a great living painter. John Marin,
[Edward] Hopper — they are dead. (I'm trying to think of modern
painters.) [Andrew] Wyeth I think is a glorified Norman Rockwell;
I simply can't — I think he's one of the greatest fakes going. Some
of his paintings are absolute copies of snapshots I The reason I feel
it is this: In his large book there is a graveyard scene in the back
of a church; a good photographer with any sensibility would see the
formal relationships of these gravestones with the church. I mean,
he'd make some effort to compose. This picture shows no effort to
compose. This is just a "click," and there it is, and he painted it.
And that bothers me.
But think of [Charles E.] Burchfield's picture, the "Hot
September Wind" — or even some of Wyet-h's, like that "Wind in the
Curtain;" there is magic in them.
But who's really doing anything among photographers? Well,
Bruce Davidson did a book on New York [East 100th Street] which is
very important. But so many of them withdraw from any human project
and just sit back and ruminate — smoke pot, and get an idea that the
chair is important, "I'll take a picture of it. Now, you undress,
you be a nude and you sit in the chair, and I'll do a double
exposure, and maybe I'll put something else in the picture. Now I've
done something!" [Laughter] And this means just something, little
thought of human communication. But you'll see many of these double
and triple exposures most of which are terrible. Some of them can
be beautiful, but most of them are so trite!
There's a whole mode now of a living room scene with the
members of the family sitting around nude. They're mostly extremely
unattractive people, and the photograph has absolutely no distinction.
[Laughter] It's completely commonplace. It used to be a little
daring. Now you say, "Oh, I've seen that before!"
And — the human body, in 90 percent of the instances, is far more
aesthetic with clothes than without. [Laughter]
The Nude
Adams: I haven't done nudes for the simple reason that the human body can
be extremely beautiful, but I've seen very few photographic nudes
that can do what painting does. I've always had that in the back of
my mind — "Why should I photograph a nude?" Now, Stieglitz and
Weston of course did some beautiful ones. [Interruption]
[End Tape 6, Side 2]
148
[Begin Tape 7, Side 1]
Adams: Now, the question of the nude has always been very important in
photography. And some of the early nudes I think were very ghastly
because they were usually done in settings of drapes and formal
Victorian rooms. We're talking now about serious nude photography.
I can't tell you about English photography. I think Julia
Margaret Cameron did some — I just don't know. There were some
painters: [Thomas] Eakins, I think, did some nudes, but I've always
had the feeling they were studies for paintings.
Then there was Ann Brigman who did nudes creatively related to
other forms — tree forms, for example — in the early 1900s.
Then there was Stieglitz who did a magnificent series of nudes
of O'Keeffe and others. Most are platinum prints. But there again,
you have this high quality of taste. These were beautiful things.
The platinum print color and the approach always gave you the
feeling of living flesh; a very important thing in photography. The
painterly nude or drawing is always just what it is. And you always —
from your Goya to your Rubens , and on to Picasso — have a nude quality
which is something apart from the ordinary.
In photography, there's very, very few that have ever done a
nude that have had that equivalent of the painterly quality. I
think Steichen did a couple (I don't know for sure). And Weston's
nudes of Tina Modotti, who had an absolutely beautiful body — as
people say, one of the most beautiful bodies extant — were really
marvelous.
And then he attempted nudes of various subjects; they're
rather scrawny. They became very strangely stylized. As I said the
other day, they were morguesque. They look like corpses on a slab;
they have no life in them.
Then Charis Weston — had a very fine body — very smooth and tall.
Weston did some beautiful things of her — in sand dunes and in various
poses. I think some of those were quite remarkable, but all in all,
I can't remember too many. I remember one nude that's simply
marvelous. It's by Ruth Bernhard. And it's a seated figure, and
all you see is the leg and the knee. And it's an absolutely monu
mental photograph — one of the great photographs.
Teiser: I was about to ask you about her, because she's one who's doing
mostly nudes now, isn't she?
Adams: I guess so — she's doing a lot of them. She is a marvelous woman.
But I haven't kept up with her work. But this one nude picture I
just think is one of the most beautiful things in photography. And
I wish there were more like it I
149
Adams: I've never had any interest in nudes because I never liked what I
saw. I mean, I felt that there are few bodies that really lend
themselves to the photographic aesthetic — something more than
members of a nudist camp. Mortensen got young girls of seventeen,
eighteen; but he ruined their quality by, as we say, "oiling" them
up.
Contrivance, Arrangement, and Simulation
Teiser: You were mentioning Wynn Bullock. And he's used nude figures — but
not for themselves, as I remember.
Adams: Well, there's some kind of a complex situation with Wynn. Mind you,
Wynn is one of the great people, one of the finest men I know. He's
just a marvelous human being. Lots of his pictures have bothered me
because they are mannered. And I'd like to clarify that. Perhaps
the word is "contrived." Now "contrived" has got a bigger meaning,
in the sense that if I'm going to do an advertisement, I have to
contrive the situation.
Say I have a model and a dress. I'm thinking of Anton Bruehl's
studio I visited years ago in New York. He was doing a picture for,
I think it was, Lipton's Tea. And the model was a quite beautiful
woman in a taffeta dress in a very elaborate setup with a silver tea
service. And she was just sipping this tea. And of course the
lighting and everything was just beyond belief. It was entirely
contrived, and yet absolutely sincere.
Now, contrivance in another meaning is when you "monkey" with
things. Such contrivance would be when a nature photographer takes
along a bunch of azalea branches and puts it in a place for
decorative effect where they couldn't exist.
Teiser: Suppose he put it in a place where they could exist?
Adams: Well, then you say — all right. Yes, yes — it's a moral, ethical
problem, and that's very flexible. You brought up a good point. If
the final result looked completely plausible and was real — all right.
But it's a very delicate thing; very hard to put your finger on.
The arrangement is one thing, but the contrivance — I know, I'll
just say — one of Bullock's has an old building and back of a window
screen is a nude. Well, for me, nothing happens. I mean, he's
trying to tell you something in a literary sense, or he's probably
having echoes of an "art" experience (art in quotes). It's very hard
to discuss — I can't quite put my finger on it. He has a picture of
a forest in Florida, and there's a little baby lying down in the ivy.
150
Adams: Why? You see, I ask myself why. It's a beautiful photograph.
There's one that he has of a little child sitting by a stream in an
enormous forest, and that's a very extraordinary thing. In addition,
it is something that could happen. He may have contrived it or
arranged it by getting her there, but it is something that could
occur. But the little baby lying down in the ivy is a questionable
thing for me. And the woman behind the screen is also questionable.
The woman lying on the bed in the room is not. That's something
that's completely plausible.
You have no idea how many thousands of photographs are made of
nudes lying on beds — with babies, without babies. [Laughter]
Imogen [Cunningham] has one of the great images — just the unmade
bed. There's nothing on it or in it, but it's a very exciting photo
graph.
So there's a very delicate definition here between the real and —
oh, the word that I'd like to use there is the "simulated." Now, to
simulate something is, I think, perfectly all right, because you
begin with reality and you're simulating it. You're trying to get a
re-creation, a simulation of this thing. And therefore it has neither
good nor bad connected with it. Arrangement is arbitrary.
Contrivance has either good or evil connected with it — contrivance
is probably a 75c word for "posing." When I show my picture of
Clarence Kennedy, who is in profile, it looks like the most obvious
pose in the world. But I say: I did not pose him. This is the
stance he takes when he's listening to somebody. In this case, he
was listening to his wife telling him what to get when he took me
downtown, because she wanted some groceries. He was just listening,
but he always put his long finger behind his ear.
Now, superficially, it looks as if I've said, "Come on, Clarence,
let's do a little pose — you know, something funny," but it wasn't that
way. That's the way he was when I made the picture.
But the separation between the real and the contrived, you see,
is very delicate.
Once Edward and Charis [Weston] and I were on a trip. Edward
was madly photographing — we were near Death Valley. And Charis saw
an old boot. So she closes her eyes and she kicks it. Then she
goes over and looks at the boot again. Then she gives it another
kick. My god, it then looked pretty good. She said, "Edward, there's
something here." He looked at it, and he made a beautiful photograph.
Now, it was no more accidental for the boot to be there than where it
was originally, except that it had been displaced and then had been
selected as reality and called attention to as a "found object."
And I don't think Edward ever knew that Charis kicked that boot. But
151
Adams: it just landed right in some sagebrush and some rocks and looked
perfectly normal. Before, it was sort of cluttered; it was difficult
to make a composition of it.
Now, is that right or wrong? If he_ had kicked the boot, then
you'd have a half-way point. If he'd taken the boot up and put it
very carefully down, and sand around it, and carefully arranged it,
then you would have contrivance. So you see, you have an ethical
point to ponder on.
On the other hand, suppose I have a perfectly beautiful
composition of rocks and there's a beer can in it. I think I'm
privileged to remove the beer can. But some purists say, no, I
shouldn't even do that. In other words, I'm manipulating; it's no
longer a true found object.
Teiser: Those are people who were born before Kleenex.
Adams: Yes. Perhaps you have been down in the desert, like Barstow, Red
Lake, some place, you know where the garbage dump is just an open
dump, and the desert wind had taken everything on the ground and
blown it over miles of desert and every bush had Kleenex and papers .
and things hanging on it! This in itself is an extraordinary
phenomenon, and if somebody from another planet had landed there, he
would have found it of the most extraordinary significance. What is
this substance that's on the bushes? I regret that I didn't record
that as part of the desert phenomena.
I do have a [photograph of a] garbage dump at Manzanar, though,
that I never thought of using, but I could now.
Meaning, Shape, and Form
Adams: My picture of the statue at the Long Beach cemetery, with the oil
derricks in the distance, was done as a quasi-surrealistic thing.
I just saw the improbability of this weeping angel and the oil
derricks. It had no definite meaning; this is just a juxtaposition
of opposites. Now, with the present pollution situation, it takes
on another meaning! I People read into that all kinds of things. I'm
even thinking of putting it in my Portfolio Seven just for that
example. It was done for one reason but is "read" today for another.
I'm proud of the photograph. But the meaning of it to me when I did
it was just the sudden shock of the juxtaposition of the statue
against the oil derricks, without any thought at all of pollution or
anything else. And now when you see it, you may entertain a totally
different meaning. Now if you saw the Angel of Death in front of oil
152
Adams: wells, you'd immediately think of environmental disasters, and so on.
And I'd like to make that point clear; it shows how expressions and
meanings can be manipulated over time.
I'm a heathen, and I look at many of the old master paintings
and I get dismally tired of the Annunciations and the Resurrections
and such things. But then you look at them abstractly — what do they
do? Of course, they're all doing about the same thing, but a few of
them always stood apart. A few of them were, I think, very inconse
quential, but have become famous because of their period and
associations. But to me, with my admittedly meager experience, the
most magnificent religious expression of the theme is at the little
santuario of Chimayo, New Mexico. The primitive Penitente paintings
there are so absolutely beautiful that I'd much rather look at them
than any Raphael or any conventional painting. Now, there are
probably all kinds of things like that all over Europe, by the
million, but these really hit me.
The Birth of Venus struck me as being absolutely tremendous,
and the El Greco paintings. I get very mad when people tell me
El Greco painted that way because he had an astigmatism. I think he
was a stylist; I think he just did this thing of certain elongations
for emotional reasons.
We're getting very far from photography, and I'm getting into a
domain that I'm really no authority in.
Teiser: Well, as it relates to your photography, which of course it does —
Adams : Getting back to the idea of the difference between shape and form,
the external world is nothing but a chaotic infinity of shapes, and
the photographer's problem is to isolate the shapes, both for
meaning and for their inherent potentials to produce form within the
format of the image. And I've had terrific semantic arguments;
people talk about natural forms, and I'd say, "Form is a product of
man's mind and concepts, and shape is a phenomenon of nature." And
the function of the artist is to develop configurations out of chaos,
and especially so the photographer. You see, a painter can have
myriad experiences and draw all these things beautifully together,
without regard for their real time or place, but the photographer's
got that camera and lens and that one film, and the maximum has to
happen when that shutter clicks.
153
Time and Reevaluation
Adams: I think maybe what happened after f/64 is interesting and deserves
a little more study. We all kept on. Imogen [Cunningham], as you
know, is something in her own. She's always been, I guess, one of
the most diverse people. The others somewhat faded from the scene.
Willard [Van Dyke] went into movies. Of course, Edward Weston kept
on, there's no question of that, and Brett is doing extremely well.
Henry Swift and John Paul Edwards faded out of the picture.
Perhaps, for maybe a decade, the f/64 wasn't too important.
It had done its job; it settled, and now it's coming back. It's
like what happens with any great artist. You take Edward Weston.
He died and there's a slump; now he's coming back ferociously on
the preciousness of his remaining work. And I can guarantee that
there will probably be quite a long period wherein he becomes a
legendary figure, and then people will begin to discover him as
dementi and Mendelssohn did Bach, and there will be a powerful
revival. I think that will probably happen with every fine
photographer and artist. After their death you'll have a kind of
surge of evaluation — get what you can and get what's left. And
then there'll be quite a long period, maybe a whole generation,
where his work may not have much meaning. And then stylistically,
it will reassert itself: just look at the history of Bach.
You remember that Beethoven had a piano that didn't permit bass
octaves. I know; I played on one of the pianos — an 1812 instrument,
an instrument that he used, or a close serial number to it. It was
owned by the people that were formerly very important in Williams-
burg, and she was a fine pianist and musicologist. And this piano
was in mint condition; you'd play on it and you'd hear it was
beautiful. But, compared to what I've got over there — a 1924 Mason
and Hamlin grand piano — there was little comparison. This was a
time when I could still play, so I remember. There wasn't space for
many of the octaves placed in later editions of his piano music.
So there was a development with the big piano and its modern
keyboard. And then Beethoven was reedited to include the octaves.
%
Teiser: It's almost as if a new dimension was found in photography which
could put a negative onto a different plane than it is now.
Adams: Well, don't think that you're just making conjectural remarks; the
thing is possibly quite true. Now we have holography. And this is
a very complicated thing, and I don't think I can describe it.
Holography gives three-dimensional effects. Using it, you might
achieve another interpretation entirely from any negative that I
have now.
154
Teiser: That's a fascinating possibility.
Adams: That is a reality. It is expensive and complex. The first color
images were made many, many years before we ever had a color print
or transparency, but they were seen by iridescence. And the silver
grain responded at different wavelengths and therefore would respond
to a different columnated light coming upon it, and you would get a
sense of color. So you see, miracles have always been with us.
Now, holography is something totally different. Some day that
may be very important; it creates the illusion of the three-
dimensional image. But still it's kind of crude and extremely
complicated and extremely cumbersome, using laser beams. But there
is always this possibility of making an integrated analysis of the
rotation of the silver grains. It would be a random thing, and
concern billions of grains practically in every place, but you might
get a feeling of a dimensional quality. You might even get a feeling
of color. But you wouldn't do it with one grain; you'd do it with a
million, a billion, a trillion grains, you see. That's where the
computer would come in.
Teiser: Sounds like a time machine.
Adams: Yes. In fact, I just read an article in Science today of the
reversible time. A theory has been proven in the domain of sub
atomic particles; they move forward and backward in time. This is
mathematical and extremely complex. Nothing to do with ordinary
experience.
The Photo League and Politics
Adams: I think we discussed the Photo League, didn't we?
Teiser: Not at any length.*
Adams: Well, that's important. I think we could end with that tonight.
It was primarily a film [motion picture] group before the war, and
it was quite important. It was always avant-garde, socially and
artistically.
Shortly after the war, it became very active with still
photography. It was dedicated to the contemporary scene. There
were some very fine photographers in it — Barbara Morgan, Beaumont
*See p. 49 and other references as indexed.
155
Adams: and Nancy Newhall, myself, Strand. Strand was one of the leaders.
There were some shows in the East, and I had one show at the San
Francisco Fair [Golden Gate International Exposition] in 1940.
At any event , in the late 1940s I received a call from Barbara
Morgan who said, "I think you ought to know what's happened. The
Commies have taken over the Photo League's board of directors." She
said, "I don't like it, because I joined it as a photographer, not
as a politician." You know, so many organizations had gone that way.
You'd join a photographic society and find out it's something in
support of the Communist party. In this case, then, they got a
photographer in as prime director of education who was a well-known
member of the party. And Barbara said, "I'm getting out, and I don't
want anything to do with this; I'm liberal, but I don't want to be
identified with the Communist party." And I said, "Neither do I."
So I called up my lawyer and asked, "What do we do? I have had
no direct experience, but I'm warned that there's a political take
over in action." He said, "Well, write them a letter requesting
information on the trend. Are they to continue as a photographic
institution or grow into a political institution?" And, with the
temper of the times, he advised me to send a copy to the FBI, which
I did.
I got no response at all, in fact, more adverse reports, so I
resigned. I sent a letter saying, "Not having had a satisfactory
answer to my question, I feel that I really shouldn't continue as a
member. So I respectfully submit my resignation." I sent a copy
also to the FBI. And it was the most fortunate thing I ever did,
because I was cleared later from being associated with a definitely
Red-oriented group.
Now, I'd like to make it clear: if it were a Republican-
oriented or a Democratic-oriented or Red-oriented organization, it
would have the same effect. I mean, I think the Communist party has
an equal right to exist along with the Nixon party. But I don't want
to be associated with those political aspects. And when I came in
for a final clearance, which was through the navy and Polaroid to do
some secret stuff, the FBI told me that the copies of these letters
they held are what made clearance possible. They said, "You clearly
stated your point of view."
Several very fine photographers — a couple of them got jobs with
the Department of Education and went over to Europe to photograph
and were turned back at the docks because they were members of the
Photo League. Of course, this was part of the McCarthy catastrophe,
and we had to fight that. They were the most innocent people in the
world; they didn't know what was going on politically. They just
wanted to practice and help the arts.
156
Teiser: This was a New York based organization, was it?
Adams: Yes.
Teiser: Who started it?
Adams: Walter Rosenblum, Paul Strand--! don't know whether Walker Evans
was in it or not; I doubt it. It was a considerable group of New
York photographers, which was a special breed. They're mostly in
journalism. I don't want to be quoted in the sense of accusing
people by association. But, it was quite a sizable group. Berenice
Abbott I think was in it. I got in it, and Willard Van Dyke — people
who were interested in joining organizations that would do good, like
the Group f/64.
Harroun: It didn't start out political?
Adams: Oh, no, it started out as a — well, it was more or less dedicated to
the American scene, because you don't have much else in New York.
The American situation, the social scene, I should say. And you
realize people who are living in New York and places don't know much
else. If they see a tree, it's a Central Park phenomenon. I mean,
they live in the ghetto, they live in the center of the city; their
whole life is people. Helen Leavitt was another one — did marvelous
photographs of people, but the orientation is totally different
from out here.
It was an organization that commanded considerable respect and
was the only one of its kind in the country. But of course we
cannot forget that hideous McCarthy period, when everybody was
accused of everything. George Marshall was in the Civil Liberties
Congress, which was very definitely a Commie organization, and he was
too naive to realize that. He was a man of very considerable means,
and they got him in. This group was brought up before the Senate,
and it was pretty grim, because most of the leading communists in the
country were in it, and George was the treasurer. (George was the
brother of Robert Marshall who founded the Wilderness Society — very
fine and wealthy people.) And the Senators demanded that he turn
over the books. And he said, "I cannot do this without the approval
of my board of directors as a matter of principle."
"You refuse to do that?"
"Yes."
Well, he was convicted of contempt of the Senate and was
sentenced to prison. Went to the Philadelphia Farm I think it was
for six months. He really went through hell. An extraordinarily
fine man. He was a man of great principle. The Senate had really
157
Adams: no jurisdiction. This is a matter which I do not believe has been
cleared yet in law. But they had no right to demand that he_ submit
the books. He said, "If my board orders me to do so. You order the
board, and they'll order me; otherwise I stand in contempt, gentle
men." It was really quite a moving situation, and it was absolutely
undemocratic and absolutely wrong.
And the photographers — we've had a lot of troubles! Strand
had to move to France or he would have been in jail, because he was
definitely a communist. Having money, you know, he could do what he
wanted. He was much luckier than others.
You're always confronted with sacrificing yourself on the alter
of political belief or being rational and doing what you have to do
as an artist, irrespective of Nixon, or McCarthy, or Roosevelt or
what.
I'm very unhappy about the contemporary situation, because I
think if something goes haywire, which it very well could, we'll
come under a very strict surveillance.
Jack Anderson's comment on the FBI when this new man, [Patrick]
Gray (who apparently is a real dumb jerk), took over: "We have no
personal files." And Anderson had photostatic copies of the
personal files. Now, take the young photographer — what is he going
to do in the world? Is he going to go out and photograph rocks and
trees, or is he going to really pitch in and do something for
society? I would admire the one who would pitch in and do something
in the sociological sense, providing he makes moving photographs.
I tell you, a typical thing was that [Ralph] Crane, I think he
was, of Life — a whole lot of pictures were made of troups departing
for the war. This was back in the early days. And oh, they had
fanfares and they had soldiers and all this stuff. And Crane made
a picture of a wife and daughter in the back of the car — they had
just taken their husband and father to the embarcation center.
That was one of the most incredible photographs I've ever seen —
I mean, just the expressions on these people. And it was a beautiful
photograph. It was beautiful tonally and compositionally. And I've
been trying to find that, and no one knows anything about it; Life
can't find it, and so on.
But there was the whole creative tragedy of the war, just in
this particular photograph of these two women, you see. And all the
other patriotic bombast was — if you read into it with a literary
sense, you thought, "Well yes, they're going over to be shot up; too
bad." That was bad. But the whole thing was summed up in this
extremely perceptive photograph. And in that way the perceptive and
158
Adams: beautifully controlled and aesthetically managed image has the
greatest power. And that's where Dorothea Lange stands head and
shoulders above all the rest of her colleagues, because she injected
that quality of art and sensitivity.
Working with Dorothea Lange
Teiser : I remember her photograph of shipyard people had that same something.
Adams: It's not known who did many of those photographs — she and I worked on
that together. The one of the people coming down, the whole crowd —
that was mine ["Shipyard Construction Workers, Richmond, California,"
1942].
Teiser: Oh, it was.'
Adams: And the picture of the Negress sitting in front of the trailer camp
housing in the mud — that was mine. And the trailer camp children
also were mine.
And then, helped by her son, she got some pictures in a bar,
which I wish I'd done. But that doesn't mean much difference. We'
did it as a joint thing, like we did the story on the Mormons. What
was Dorothea's idea, what was my idea, whether she or I did the
photograph — what difference does it make? Those really were joint
projects, and I imagine it was a fifty-fifty result.* It was a
privilege to work with her, but it was difficult. Even at that time
she wasn't well, and she'd overdo and she'd have medical problems.
I don't regret my life at all. It's been spectacular in many
ways. And you know, working with people is rewarding. Some day I'll
give you a story of my invasion of the South with telephone advertising
people. That would be another story.
Teiser: Well, I'll write it down to bring up later.
Adams: Some of it, if I told the truth, you couldn't even print.
[Interruption — visitor enters]
Adams: Ah, this is Dick Julian, one of my prize students, a very fine
photographer, a very fine electronics engineer. He's made me two
*See also other references to Dorothea Lange as indexed.
159
Adams: gadgets, timers, which put me in this enviable world of
technological superiority! And he's a fine photographer, which is
the most important thing. I'd like to show you his portfolio.
[End Tape 7, Side 1]
Early Visits to New Mexico
[Interview VI — 26 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 7, Side 2]
[Virginia Adams participated in this interview]
Teiser: I can start today by reading you some dates that I have here that
maybe will recall to you your early trips to New Mexico. These are
mostly from Mrs. Newhall's book.
Adams : Yes .
Teiser: Some time in 1927 —
Adams: That's the date I went.
Teiser: — you went first to Santa Fe with Albert Bender.
Then in 1928 you went twice, and then in 1929 in the spring
you and Mrs. Adams went, and then I don't know —
Adams: Well, she [Mrs. Newhall] didn't get all those details in those days,
because it was pretty complex. But I can start it off by saying
that Bertha Damon, who was then Bertha Pope, was quite a literary
figure. You remember, she's written really delightfully. I think
her first book was A Sense of Humus, which was on gardening. It was
just marvelous. And the other one was Grandma Called It Carnal.
That was marvelous too. She's a great stylist. And she was a
great friend of Witter Bynner's.
So Albert Bender said, "Let's us go down in the old bus and see
Bynner and the other people down there." Bertha and Albert and I
drove down in his Buick, which I think was a 1926 coach — terribly
good automobile, probably still running. And in those days the
roads were simply ghastly. The highway over to Tehachapi, that
wasn't so bad, but when you got over to Mojave — from Mojave on east
it was all "washboard" — just dreadful road. Dust. You know what a
washboard road is?
V. Adams: That was the time we took Ella Young?
160
Adams: No, I'm speaking of going there first with Bertha. April 1927 —
that was the first trip.
V. Adams: I don't remember.
Adams: [To Mrs. Adams] She got that out of Nancy's book.
So we arrived in Santa Fe and went to the De Vargas Hotel.
This is very poignant — I met Bynner for the first time in the men's
room.
V. Adams: You mean that's where you were to meet? [Laughter]
Adams: We arrived in a state. It was snowing and a dust storm, so the
snow was literally gray. I've never seen anything like it since.
V. Adams: What time of year?
Adams: April. So then Witter said, "Well, you're all coming to dinner,"
and he gave us the address but he didn't give us directions.
Bertha was sure it was the north side of the Santa Fe River.
I didn't know. So we went up there and got lost and kept calling
on people, and these people only spoke Spanish, you know — it was
a terrible time. Finally we got back to the hotel, and Bynner
said on the phone, "I didn't tell you. We're first meeting at a
party on Canyon Road. So you go there."
So we went there and there was a real wild drinking party,
and a lot of young people had passed out —
V. Adams: That was quite a beginning. [Laughter]
Adams: In those days Santa Fe was really something — very exotic.
And then we got to Bynner's place about nine o'clock, and
there was more partying, and then about ten o'clock he had this
dinner. Well, poor Albert wasn't used to that kind of stuff at
all. Bertha was, but she was furious. The only reason I took it,
I guess, was that I was young.
So we had several riotous days, and we met people — Mary
Austin, Haniel Long, Arthur Davidson Ficke, Shuster —
V. Adams: Will.
Adams: Will Shuster, and the Cassidys, Gerald and Ina Sizer Cassidy, and
quite a few others that were writers and artists and friends of
Bynner and Bertha.
And we toured around a bit. We went to Taos , but we didn't
meet Mabel [Dodge Luhan] .
161
Teiser :
Adams :
V. Adams;
Adams :
V . Ad ams ;
Adams :
V . Adams :
Adams :
V. Adams;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
You did not?
No, not that time,
came home.
She was in Europe or something. And then we
Didn't you have a trip across the desert, sort of just across the
country somewhere, in Albert's car?
Oh yes, that's interesting. We went to Grand Canyon on the way.
And we left Flagstaff, and the road was terrible. So we stopped
some shepherd by the road, and I said, "Can I cut across here?"
He says, "Oh, go right across." How we ever did it I don't know,
but we got that car across about eight, ten miles of Arizona
desert without any mishaps. It was a foolhardy thing to do — just
absolutely ridiculous. But I didn't see that it was much worse
than the road. We cleared everything. Had a little trouble
getting on the road on the South Rim, though. We had to navigate
for a mile or two to find a place where we could get down the bank,
see. And I had to get out and move some logs, but we made it.
[Laughter] Then we went to Grand Canyon.
Who else was there with you?
Friend of Bertha's.
I can't even think who it is.
I can't even remember the name. I think Albert was very jealous —
He thought that he should have the center of attention, which he
should have.
It was very funny — one morning I left very early to get a picture,
and I looked down from (I forget which point it was — near the big
hotel, I guess), and I saw this little figure walking around in
circles out on this sort of an esplanade, quite a way down. It
was Albert. He was pacing in a circle. He was depressed because
he thought that this guy wasn't worthy of Bertha. I don't know
how confidential to be about this, but it was very funny.
Anyway, we got home safely,
that happened.
How long a trip was it?
Two weeks .
Did you do all the driving?
Yes. Albert didn't drive.
I can't think of anything else
162
V. Adams: The bounding Buick. It bounded that time, for sure.
Adams: Bertha didn't like driving. I could take it hour after hour, but
those washboard roads were unbelievable.
Teiser: Do you remember what your first impression of Mary Austin was?
Adams: I met her at a party. She was rather grim, very nice, to me at
least — didn't like Bertha.
V. Adams: She didn't really like most women, especially here was Bertha,
who had done some writing. She wanted to be at the center.
Adams: At any event, she saw some of my pictures, which I'd taken down
there.
Then the next trip is when we- met the Applegates, Frank Apple-
gate and his wife [Alta], and Mary Austin again.
V. Adams: Was that the time we went together, or were you there another time
after that? You went to New York on the train and stopped off.
Adams: That's right. Several trips there, we went by train.
V. Adams: Yes, because once was just before Christmas, and you took some
pictures of the snow on the adobe house.
Adams: Bynner's home.
Teiser: That must have been 1928. According to Mrs. Newhall's book, you
were there in April and then in November 1928.
V. Adams: Well, that could be. Because, you know, we got married in January
1928, but I had invited people to Yosemite. I had a household
there to work on. And you were going east. And we didn't go
until the spring of '29, when we went with —
Adams: Yes, Ella Young.
Well, there were several trips, and at that time we arranged
to do the Taos book, and a lot of pictures for the Spanish-Colonial
Art Society.
V. Adams: Which Mary Austin was very active in.
Adams: And, of course, I was staying with Bynner in that beautiful house.
But Bynner would party until one in the morning, and then he'd
work with his secretary.
V. Adams: He was stimulated, I guess.
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Adams: The party would go until four or five, and he wouldn't get up
until two the next day, but I'd have to get up around dawn to get
pictures!
V. Adams: He [Bynner] would go out and work in the early morning in his
garden, then retire. He often did it after work with his
secretary, at seven and eight. Then he'd go to bed.
V. Adams: Yes. His day was over — I mean, night was over.
Adams: He'd get up at two or three to attend the affairs of the day. Cut
his coupons and order the meals. [Laughter]
V. Adams: He had a wonderful cook, Rita. She was with him for many years.
Teiser: Who was his secretary?
Adams: He had several. I forget just who it was.
V. Adams: Was his name Gorman — the one that we knew first?
Adams: There was Gorman; then there was McCarthy — a wild Irishman,
terrible!
V. Adams: Then there was the last one. He died before Hal [Witter Bynner]
did, and Hal felt very badly about that, because they'd shared so
much. He'd built a whole addition to his house that was for this
young man, and then he was gone before Hal. I don't remember now.
Teiser: Did you know Witter Bynner when he was in Berkeley?
Adams: No, I never knew him at that time.
V. Adams: Not until he came back and we were at Cedric's [Cedric Wright's],
That must have been '28, because we were living at Cedric's house
on Etna Street, Berkeley.
Adams: I didn't know him before I went to Santa Fe.
V. Adams: Yes, we met him there.
Teiser: Frank Applegate — there's an awfully good picture you made of him
that's in The Eloquent Light.
Adams: Oh yes, with a cigarette ash.
V. Adams: Oh, he was great.
164
Adams: He was an artist. Of course, he was ill — I think he had TB or
some such disease. He was from New Jersey, and he came out to New
Mexico. He was a pretty shrewd man. He built adobe houses to sell
them. Then he would study the santos — he had a great working
knowledge of the bultos and santos. He would acquire them and
restore them, and that has driven the museum people absolutely
wild, because the restorations are confusingly good in many
instances. He had no idea of the "museology" of what he was doing.
V. Adams: You know he was a painter. If he could put a little more paint on
something — pick it up a little bit —
Adams: He'd retouch it and fix it up — put in a little new gesso, etc.
V. Adams: But he first came out from New Jersey and was sent to the Hopi
country. They were having trouble with their pottery. It was too
fragile. And he apparently knew something about clay. And they
lived in one of the Hopi pueblos for, I imagine, a year or so.
And I said to his wife, Alta, "What did you do for the bathroom?"
She said, "Fortunately, it was an old house that had another room
that nobody used, with a dirt floor," so they did just what the
cats and dogs do. They had one daughter who was just a little bit
of a girl.
Then they went on to Santa Fe.
Adams: But he was quite successful. He had one of the most beautiful
new houses — that is, in the real pueblo style. He added to a
beautiful old adobe; everything was absolutely authentic.
V. Adams: We'll have to show you some of the pictures.
Adams: He really knew what he was doing.
V. Adams: And Ansel took a lot of pictures of furniture — chests and things —
for a hoped-for book that Mary Austin and Applegate were going to
do.
Adams: I'll have to remind Ted Organ [Ansel Adams's assistant] that one of
my priority projects is finishing the early New Mexico pictures for
E. Boyd of the Museum.* And why they don't send me a bomb in a
package, because of my delay, I don't know.
*Added by Ansel Adams in July 1977: "I was doing a series of
pictures of Spanish-American art and furniture, etc. for Mary Austin
and Frank Applegate. That folded, and E. Boyd asked for the pictures
I made. She died a couple of years ago [30 September 1974]. I
suppose the negatives still have value."
165
Teiser: Have you promised her a show?
Adams: It isn't that. It's all these things that aren't fine photographs,
but they're invaluable records.
V. Adams: They're records, because this was 1927-8-9.
Adams: [To Ted Organ] Ted, we ought to wash them and refix them and reduce
them — many of them, and really make —
V. Adams: When's he going to have time to do this?
Adams: Oh, he'll have time.
V. Adams: Remember, you promised that he could photograph some of my Indian
baskets for records, but he's never going to have time to.
Adams: That's another story.
V. Adams: I know.
Adams: You're on tape now. [Laughter]
Indian Art and Architecture
Teiser: Let's at least note that you have a fine Indian basket collection.
Back to New Mexico —
Adams: Well, New Mexico's a very complex mystique, and I reacted strongly
to it. One very interesting thing is that I'm really a heathen.
My family I suppose were Episcopalian originally, but half of them
became converted Catholics. Neither my mother or my father or my
immediate family on that side had any direct interest in religion
at all. I never went to church, and Papa was a constructive
heathen, and I hope I am too. But the dichotomy of the situation
is that always the primitive Indians' Catholic life, their works
of art and their moradas, were profound in their emotional effect
on me, and a lot of my photographs relate to cemeteries and some
of those beautiful frescoes and objects. I look at it as a kind of
folk art — a transcription of intense feeling of people. (And I
would probably do the same thing in Hawaii with the Buddhists.) As
far as doing it from the point of view of a Catholic, people don't
understand why I should be interested. And of course the people
down there didn't like you to photograph their old, used-up
cemeteries because they're not taken care of. Now some are taken
care of, which is ruining the "mood."
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Adams :
V. Adams:
Teiser :
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams:
Adams :
The Mormons, for instance, deeply resented our photographing old
barns and old things, because they were trying to raise everything
up to the new qualities and standards. But the people down there
in New Mexico have really deteriorated now tremendously, and
these cemeteries are a kind of desolation. The women can't mud
the adobes any more. You used to see them out there putting it on
by hand. Every year they used to go over the buildings. They
can't do it any more, so they have to stucco these buildings.
They put tin roofs on them. (That beautiful church in Hernandez
in my "Moonrise" picture now has a tin roof.) But there's nothing
else they can do, because there is no way to take care of it.
With adobe structures, it takes a constant putting on of mud.
That's what gives it its peculiar texture and shape. The people
who fake it, they do it with a brush, you see. When they use the
mud, they just go over it and over it — filling in the little cracks.
When Georgia O'Keeffe redid her house, she was able to get knowledg-
able people, and the women really did do it the old way.
It was always woman's work, wasn't it?
Yes, that was. The men, I guess, made the adobes, dried them and
stacked them up, but when it came to the plastering, men and women
worked at it. And the Mexicans did the same thing.
But there's an interesting thing, that some of the people were
doing that with cement. They'd get a very careful cement stucco
and give it the right color and then put it on by hand. It isn't
exactly the same but it lasts longer —
Yes, of course it lasts.
Adobe is built with straw to hold it together,
kind of adobe soil is available.
It depends on what
One of the things that was so interesting to me was that they
could analyze something about the flowers and things that were
growing at the time an adobe brick was made, because they used
this straw for the stuff that made it stay together. And they
could work out the flora 'way in the early days.
But now they use, of course, the modern adobe, and many houses are
being built with that. But that is usually sized with a binder and
it makes it very strong.
You see, some of these places have serious trouble because of
what they call the "main vigas" — the cross beams. Most of the
adobe buildings were really small except the churches, and there
167
Adams :
V. Adams
Harroun:
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams ;
Adams :
V . Adams :
Adams :
V. Adams;
Adams :
they had trouble. But they had enough sense to make a wood lintel
or a brick coping across, I guess you'd call the top of the walls,
because the heavy beam would gradually compress the adobe. And so
they founded what they called the "Spanish colonial" style. They
were built of adobe, but built very trimly — very accurately — with
a brick coping, and then the beams rested on that.
And we saw Senator Cutting's house,
colonial house.
It is a great classic
You see, the real adobe is what they call the primitive,
natural adobe. Then you have the colonial type, which is for more
sophisticated people, who really did design the architecture. But
they're walled-in adobe, and very trim, and the windows have the
colonial cut. And they're still beautiful; the walls are about
five feet thick.
Have you been inside the Carmel Mission?
Yes, but not recently.
There's the same feeling there.
Yes, but that's been very carefully restored.
They have restored that, yes, but —
It went to pieces fast before Harry Downie took charge of the
restoration.
I learned a lot about adobe I Frank and I would tour all over
the region. We went to moradas. I have a beautiful interior of a
morada. A morada was a penitente chapel. The penitentes were —
were they actually excommunicated?
They were at one time, yes. Yes. What happened was that the
Catholics went away from there, and these little village people
kept on with their religion —
In their own way.
In their own way. And this penitente thing that gets talked about,
where they whip themselves and all — the Fathers when they came back
strongly disapproved of that.
The Fathers were German Jesuits. Let's see, in the first days they
were Franciscans and very sympathetic to the natives. But when
the German priests came (I think they were Jesuits) , they ordered
the old relics thrown out; said they were heathen relics! And
they imported those hideous plaster things from Rome. So we would
168
Adams: go into strange places and find beautiful old things, most of
which have now been sold or put into a museum. Once in a while
there are some remaining, like the altars at santuarios. Many
were the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And all too often
there is an Italianate picture of the Virgin — or statue — with
pink cheeks and all otherwise terrible. But they'd dress them up
and put all kinds of geegaws around them.
V. Adams: It remains very close to their hearts, as I think is true with all
peasant groups now.
Ella Young
V. Adams: I want you to talk about the time when Ella Young went down with
us to Santa Fe.
Adams: Well, that's really a story I
V. Adams: There's an interim there, of course. But while we're talking about
that, and before I go and do other things, let's talk about —
Adams: You can cut in on this.
V. Adams: Yes.
Adams: Well, Ella Young was an Irish poet, also an Irish revolutionary.
She was a doctor of jurisprudence; she really was a lawyer. She
was also a very mythical-minded Irish lady who was always seeing
little people — wonderful stories about that]
V. Adams: Her father I think was a minister — not Catholic, but a minister, of
whatever the faith was. And she got away from that, and she lived
in Dublin with Maude Gonne, who was a very fine actress and a great
friend of the Irish writer William Butler Yeats. I think she was
his lady friend.
Anyway, she lived there with them and they actually were
active in that 1916 uprising. Now I don't know that the public
has ever known much about it. But she told me one time that they
did have guns in their home. I think she was kind of a helper to
this Maude Gonne.
Adams: She barely escaped; she got out of Ireland.
V. Adams: And I think whoever was her boyfriend was killed, but I never knew
who it was.
169
V. Adams: But one time she took us with her when we went to lunch, with the
Monsignor at St. Patrick's in San Francisco.
Adams: Marvelous man.
V. Adams: Yes, a charming person, and she'd known him in Ireland. And we
all had lunch together. I felt so sorry for him, because the
old lady that kept the house for him really didn't keep it clean.
Adams: Dusty, you know.
V. Adams: It really was. But it was wonderful for Ella Young to visit him
again, and they talked a little bit about it [the 1916 uprising].
But if you ever have a chance to look up something about Maude
Gonne — apparently she was very beautiful and quite active in that
revolutionary movement.
Adams: She wasn't one of the women in my_ life. [Laughter]
V. Adams: No, no.
Adams: — our lives. I must make this very precise.
V. Adams: But anyway, this Ella Young was a marvelous person.
Adams: She wrote Gaelic fairy tales.
V. Adams: I'll show you some of her books.
Adams: She always wore purple veils or scarfs. And we always used to
meet at Colonel [C.E.S.] Wood's place. At Colonel Wood's eightieth
birthday —
V. Adams: — which was your fiftieth.
Adams: — everybody got cockeyed on the Colonel's wonderful red wine, and
she read the benediction in Gaelic wearing a purple scarf, hanging
on, as I remember, to the top of an Italianate chair. She could,
of course, speak beautiful Gaelic. She would declare that she saw
all the little people. And she practiced all kinds of little
rituals .
Now, we decided that we would go to New Mexico. And I have
pictures of you and Ella and others taken in New Mexico.
V. Adams: We had to wait until after Albert Bender's St. Patrick's Day party.
We left the next day and picked her up at Halcyon, which is down
the coast, below Pismo Beach.
170
Adams: Where the elder Varians lived. It was a theosophy colony.
We drove to New Mexico and had a couple of close calls. They
were rebuilding the road near Taos and it caved in.
V. Adams: Well, wasn't that coming south from Taos?
Adams: Yes. Ella — when she got to the Arizona border (she always wanted
to know when she entered a new state) — she left the car and poured
a little wine on the ground.
V. Adams: And at every lunch on the trip we offered a libation to the gods.
We'd have wine and cheese and other things in our lunches. She
was lovely I
Adams: For a practical man like me, it was a little screwy, but it had a
great charm.
V. Adams: Well, it was fun. We were young and this was funl
Adams: So we got along fine down there. But she was very proper. Of
course, Bynner immediately kisses every woman who shows up.
V. Adams: She didn't want to be kissed?
Adams: She refused to be kissed by Bynner.
V. Adams: Well, I don't blame her.
Adams: "Oh, come on Ella, you're just a friend." "No! My resolution.'"
[Laughter] So Ella was the only one that was not "smacked."
Everybody got "smacked," from six up to sixty-nine.
V. Adams: She had gone to stay with a friend of hers — some woman whose name
I don't remember, some woman who'd been hurt in an accident and
blamed the railroad — blamed somebody. She was suing like mad, and
she was really very ill. She was living in one of the little old
houses that were railroad houses — you know, in New Mexico — the
typical ones — red brick and sooty yards.
Ella Young had told us that she would like to go and see
Mabel Luhan, and she said, "I understand that if you get invited
to Mabel's, you can stay."
Adams: You're in.
V. Adams: That's right. So we had been there a very short time. We were
staying at Mary Austin's little house, and there was a party next
door, and Mabel came. And I guess Ella Young was the one, wasn't
171
V. Adams: it, that the party was for — maybe she'd lectured or something — do
you remember about that? Well anyway, it was through Ella Young,
really, that we got the idea that if you were "in" with Mabel that
you got to go to Taos. [To Ansel Adams] Go on, go on.
Adams: Well, Mabel was one thing, and Ella Young was another. Ella Young
absolutely believed that New Mexico had little people, like
Ireland. So she kept talking about the little people she'd seen.
And Bynner was very skeptical of these things. I had a fairly
open mind; all the Indians I knew are quite real, but I'd never
heard of little Indian people. Bynner said, "Now would you
describe to me just how they look?" And she did, and she had a
most minute description. They had Hopi shoes, and Navajo pants and
skirts, and Sioux headdresses. [Laughter] War bonnets; all of them
had little war bonnets on.
Ella would talk, and Bynner was absolutely fascinated, because
he felt that she had a great poetic quality.
Now, she was sponsored and protected, during the remaining
years of her life, by Noel Sullivan. And you can tie in a lot of
things of Ella Young through the Noel Sullivan history.
V. Adams: She was a great person, really; a very lovely person.
Adams: So one day we were up at Mabel's place, and O'Keeffe was there —
Georgia O'Keeffe. And let's see, I was sitting at breakfast with
Mabel, and in came Ella with a blue scarf. And then a little
later, in came O'Keeffe.
So Ella said, "Well, good morning. How did you enjoy your
walk?" O'Keeffe says, "What walk?"
V. Adams: Aren't you getting it the other way around? Didn't O'Keeffe say
that to Ella?
Adams: Yes — I stand corrected! O'Keeffe came in and said to Ella Young,
"How did you enjoy your walk?" And Ella said, "What walk?"
Georgia said, "I was up in my room and I saw you walking out
towards the morada." And Ella said, "No, I didn't."
"Well," she said, "I saw you. You opened the gate. You
closed it carefully, and you walked on towards the morada, which is
about half a mile." Ella says, "I never did any such thing," and
is looking a little bit dismal. And O'Keeffe says, "But I saw you."
"Well, you didn't see me. You must have seen something, but
you didn't see me." And Mabel was getting quite distressed; this
whole thing was quite argumentative. But O'Keeffe was quite sure.
172
Adams: And Ella said, "Well, it must have been my astral body." And then
O'Keeffe came back and said, "Well, I don't know what it was, but
it was something!" [Laughter]
But this is the kind of thing that was going on all the time.
It was all crazy as the devil, but it's funny.
Santa Fe People
Adams: So there was Marin and O'Keeffe and Paul Strand — at Mabel's.
That's where I met Marin.
V. Adams: That was later on.
Adams: I can't get the sequence right; these things are all telescoped
over a few years.
Well, then Mary Austin fixed it up with the Taos governor
through Tony —
V. Adams: Mabel Luhan's husband, Tony Luhan.
Adams: — fixed it up for me to come and photograph Taos — to do a book
with her.
Teiser: They were very careful about who they'd let in at Taos?
Adams: Yes, they had an all-night council meeting and finally decided I
could do it.
V. Adams: We did a book about Taos Pueblo. Have you seen that book? We'll
have to show you, if you haven't seen it. It's a big book.
Teiser: This is the 1930 book, Taos Pueblo?
Adams: Yes. Mary Austin wrote the text. The crazy thing was, you see,
that Mary Austin had it a bit on Mabel. Because Mabel had Tony as
a chauffeur when she first came, and then she fell heavy for Tony.
And it was no matter that Tony had an Indian wife. So there was
some legal or illegal divorcement. Then Mary Austin suddenly moved
in; she had to protect the Indian wife because of her avowed interest
in the Indians. She arranged that Mabel pay alimony to the Indian
wife as long as she lived. Of course, Mabel was a tremendously
wealthy woman, so it couldn't possibly have affected her. [Laughter]
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Adams: There's a marvelous story about Mabel. Let's see, it's "Mabel
Dodge Sterne Evans Luhan."*
Well, Edwin Dodge was sitting in his club in New York. And
somebody came in and said, "Guess what your ex-wife has done."
And he said, "I haven't got the slightest idea. She can do
anything." Well, she's going to marry a full-blooded Taos Indian."
Edwin looked around and raised his head and said, "Lo, the poor
Indian!" [Laughter]
When she married Maurice Sterne — everybody's dead now — she
met him in Europe at a salon in Florence or Venice or somewhere,
and they got married. And Mabel went to New Mexico on the
honeymoon, and he went to Florida. [Laughter] So you get some
idea of the whole situation involved in this thing.
Then Evans came before that.
V. Adams: She'd had one son, John Evans.
Adams: John Evans was quite a nice guy. Saw his house in Santa Fe. Of
all the crazy things to build in the Santa Fe country, it's an
English manor house, but that's what he did.
V. Adams: They came from New York.
Adams: Well, let's see. The Santa Fe experience was a very complex inter
mingling of work with Frank Applegate and Mary Austin.
Teiser: What was the original concept of that project?
Adams: It was to be a book on Spanish-American art and decoration.
Teiser: As a whole?
Adams: As a whole. It was very vague. There' d never been a real
scholar involved. It was the first time I realized, I think, what
the difference between the interest of a dilettante and a real
scholar is. Because nobody was analyzing this. They'd say, "Well,
there's a chest," and you'd go and photograph that — and nobody was
really getting this project organized. That's what E. Boyd, who
was an art history person with the museum, a really highly trained
person, could do.
V. Adams: And quite a characterl
*Born Mabel Ganson, she married successively Carl Evans, Edwin
Dodge, Maurice Sterne, and Antonio Luhan.
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Adams: Oh, she's marvelous, yes. There was Marie Garland —
V. Adams: Hamlin Garland's ex-wife.
Adams: She married Henwar Rodakiewicz — Polish; he's one of my oldest
friends, and he's still living in New York. He's a creative
cinema man.
And we had many parties out there at their ranch north of
Santa Fe.
V. Adams: It's a marvelous place —
Adams: It's still there.
Teiser: How did all these people happen to be living around Santa Fe?
V. Adams: Because they liked to live in that country. It's just like people
like to live in Carmel. It just does something to you — makes you
happy to be there. But they have to have enough money to be able
to live there, because you don't live on the country.
Adams: There are a great many wealthy easterners. It's an impossible
place for a gringo to make a living, except a few bankers who can
sure milk the native populace. But you had some very wealthy
families — the White sisters from Boston, and the McCormicks, and
any number of people came who had the means just to live. Witter
Bynner was financially independent; Arthur Davidson Ficke made a
fortune in Japanese prints. Mary Austin was probably one of the
few really hard-working people who lived there — writing.
V. Adams: But some of the artists live there now by the skin of their teeth.
Adams: Yes. Of course, a lot of the good artists, they'd sell a few
things there, but they'd send most of their work east. Like all
the good artists here rarely show in Carmel. The Carmel Art
Association has an occasional show for many of the few very fine
artists around here, but some of them I've never seen.
Teiser: Was Frieda Lawrence still around?
V. Adams: She wasn't around when we were there.
Adams: I never met [D.H.] Lawrence; Lawrence was before my time.
V. Adams: Did you meet her? I never met her.
Adams: Oh, I met Frieda once. And then I met Toby — Toby's the name of
the ear trumpet.
175
V. Adams: Oh, Brett! The Honorable Dorothy Brett, who had a trumpet named
Toby.
Adams: She was deaf. [Laughter] But when she really became impassioned
in discussion, she'd put the trumpet down in her lap and just talk
to you perfectly normally. But if she was bored or something,
she'd put this up and say, "What?" [Laughter]
V. Adams: She's still in existence, isn't she?
Adams: Oh yes, I think so.
The most wonderful group of nuts you can possibly imagine!
Teiser: You mentioned 'someone named Long?
Adams: Haniel. He was a writer and poet. I think he was a friend of
MacLeish — Archibald MacLeish, but I don't really know.
V. Adams: He was a writer and he published things in the Santa Fe area.
Adams: And he also published in the East. But again, most of these
people had income from outside. Of course, now Santa Fe is a big
place, and lots of people can make money there, in real estate and
stores and so on, but it still is not a real money-producing place.
Albuquerque depends largely on science — NASA, you know, the Sandia
base. And the farming, and the cattle and all that is really small
family stuff still, isn't it?
V. Adams: Well, I don't know.
Adams: I don't think there are any great corporate farms, like there are
in California.
Teiser: You mentioned Will Shuster —
V. Adams: Yes, he was an artist — painter.
Adams: Oh, there were so many I can't think of all of them.
Taos Pueblo
Teiser: Whose idea was the Taos book — yours, or Mary Austin's?
Adams: I think, frankly, it was mine. I mentioned it to Albert Bender,
and he thought it was a good idea, and said to see if Mary would do
the text. And Mary would do the text. And then, Albert got Grabhorn
176
Adams: to do the typography. And Dassonville, who was a photographer and
manufactured, at that time, the finest photographic paper, which
was pure silver bromide on rag paper, he was going to coat the
paper. So we ordered a quantity from a New England mill, which
was divided between Grabhorn and Dassonville — the same paper stock.
And the only thing that we missed on was that the paper should have
been soaked before it was printed by Grabhorn, because the paper
was fairly smooth when it came, but when it was coated with the
photographic emulsion and then developed, fixed, and washed, it
took on a certain texture a little different from the printed
sheets in the book. Apparently, the sheets differ in look and
feel although they're both exactly the same basic paper. And that
was before the time of toning, before the time we knew about two
hypo baths. And some of these prints are not permanent, which
bothers me very much — a few are "turning" a little.
V. Adams: The Book Club [of California] is kind of interested in the idea of
republishing it.
Adams: Yes, it could be published —
V. Adams: Nobody has ever read this text except the hundred people who
bought the book. It's a charming essay.
Adams: You'd have to just use a printing process that would simulate the
qualities of the prints — probably right from the page.
V. Adams: The linen for the binding, the rust-colored linen, was dyed
by Hazel Dreiss, and she made the binding and the end-papers.
Adams: The end leather, they call it.
V. Adams: It came from England.
Adams: No, from Algeria.
V. Adams: Anyway, it's very special.
Adams: Everybody was broke, and Hazel Dreiss called up and said, "The
leather for the book's here, but there's a four-hundred-dollar bill,
and I don't have it. Do you have it?" And I said, "No."
"Well, who's got that money? It will be returned if I don't
pay it. So who do I call?" I said, "Albert Bender." He said,
"All right" and sent the check (as usual.'.').*
*See also other references to Taos Pueblo as indexed.
177
V. Adams: He was a wonderful person.
Adams: He always came through, and he was not a rich man — he was well-to-do
but nothing much above average.
V. Adams: He'd earned it in his insurance business; he'd worked hard.
Adams: He lived alone. But he was the most generous person.
Teiser: In Mrs. Newhall's book, it says he had a housekeeper who was a
terrible cook.
Adams: Oh, perfectly awful.
V. Adams: Mrs. Ayres.
Teiser: Do you recall Anne Bremer?
V. Adams: That was a cousin of his, a very sweet person, I guess. I never
met her. Did you meet her?
Adams: An artist — I met her once — very hazy recollection of it.
V. Adams: And then she died; he was very fond of her.
Adams: That was his great personal tragedy.
Teiser: Over how long a period did you photograph Taos?
Adams: I did it all in one year, I think.
V. Adams: That spring of 1929.
Teiser: All in one season?
Adams: I think I came back later and did one photograph. And of course
there is in the book the great church of the Ranches de Taos,
which has nothing to do with Taos Pueblo and really should not be
in the book. But it was so closely identified with the area!
V. Adams: And was so beautiful.
Adams: It is the greatest building of its kind in America. It's just an
incredible thing. And we put that in, called the Ranches church,
and Mary Austin thought it was all right to do it. But we had the
old church ruins, the new church, and then the Ranches church. And
seeing that these were the intrusions of the Catholics, it didn't
make much difference; but strictly, it's not Taos Pueblo.
V. Adams: Well, they're old and new —
178
Adams: I made a picture of a kiva in a dust storm. The camera was
shaking in the gale. I really got into Taos ; to do it today,
you'd do it totally differently.
V. Adams: You couldn't do it today, Ansel. Because it's different. I mean,
there were still the people there who really felt for it. Now,
you're just a tourist and you pay your money and you get to take
some pictures —
Adams: Yes, but I still think if you went there, and wanted to do a
definitive book — not on a tourist basis — that you could do it.
You'd have to pay for it, which you should.
Teiser: Did you then?
Adams: I gave them a book. I think I paid a hundred dollars too.
V. Adams: Mary Austin said they wrapped the book in deerskin and put it in
their archives.
Adams: It's in the kiva.
Teiser: Oh, it is!
V. Adams: It's very precious.
Teiser: Did they help you? Were they interested in what you were doing?
Adams: Oh yes. They were very good. The word went out to help. And I
didn't have any trouble at all, except one time a big fat Indian
jumps on the running board of the car: "Pay me one dollar." And
I said no, it was already paid for. We paid a hundred dollars for
the right to do the book. He said, "Pay me one dollar." And I
speeded up the car and he almost fell off, and I felt bad about it.
I told Tony [Luhan] about it. "Oh, he damn fool. Pay no
attention." [Laughter]
Teiser: Was Tony Luhan a Taos Indian?
Adams: Full-blooded Taos Indian, yes. Slightly ostracized —
V. Adams: Well, he'd sloughed off his wife-
Adams: Of course, Mabel did a lot for the Taos Indians.
V. Adams: One time I went with Tony to the Indian school, and he talked to
some little boys who must have been his children. He said, "They're
my nephews . "
179
Teiser: The picture of Tony in the Taos book was done in San Francisco?
Adams: The picture of Tony was done in my studio in San Francisco.
V. Adams: It was so thrilling. He would take just a little drum that we had
and he would sit in the yard and sing, and all the neighborhood
kids would come around. Oh, it was such fun. He was sweet.
Adams: It was really an experience.
Teiser: There's such a big literature on all this, and often Tony Luhan is
made fun of.
Adams: Well, the point is that an awful lot of sophisticates try to get
on this bandwagon, and they really don't know anything about it,
you see. Hearsay, and second hearsay, and all kinds of very
strange misinterpretations. But I think he was much more naive
than anybody could imagine. But Mabel was a hunter, and she
hunted all the prominent people to bring there; she literally
captured them!
V. Adams: She took us up to that cave, I don't know where it was.
Adams: Wasn't it near the Blue Lakes?
V. Adams: No. Arroyo something — I don't know. We went up the valley, as if
we were going to Colorado, and then we went up a canyon.
Adams: Oh yes, I know.
V. Adams: And it was something that was supposed to be very serious, and
the light came down at a certain angle at a certain time. And she
said maybe the Aztecs had been there. I mean, it was very super-
super. And some girl she'd taken there just felt that she saw
them all there, and she crawled out of the cave —
Adams: She was slightly fey.
V. Adams: She had a feel for all those things. [Laughter]
[End Tape 7, Side 2]
[Begin Tape 8, Side 1]
Adams: Well, I think an analysis of this whole Mabel Luhan business would
be exciting, because she, of course, had, as I said, a tremendous
amount of money and influence.
V. Adams: You've read some of her books, haven't you?
180
Teiser: Yes.
Adams: She had a salon in Italy, and she was always gathering people unto
her. And the biggest feather in her cap — it was quite a struggle —
was to get Lawrence to New Mexico. Now, as far as I can make out,
from reading the things and knowing her, that poor old Lawrence
was dragged there by his beard, and was very unhappy, because he
became sort of a curiosity. She could afford anything, and she
just kept these people; she would collect these celebrities.
V. Adams: She probably fought with Frieda, didn't she?
Adams: She fought with everybody, in the end. We got along all right; but
she was mad at me one time — furious.
Teiser: Why?
Adams: I don't know; I guess I wasn't sympathetic enough. If you ever
raised your voice in the slightest bit of criticism, you were out.
But I never really got out, I just got put in the dog house.
V. Adams: You didn't fall for her, Ansel; you know, that's one of the things.
Adams: You see, I didn't have any concept at all of being a celebrity, of
being important to anything.
V. Adams: Well, you were just a young man —
Adams: I was just trying to do photographs. Of course, now you have this
feeling — people tell you you're celebrated or well known, and so
on. It didn't make any impression on me because this is the kind
of thing that only historians can define, and I know I've made
certain contributions, but certainly at that time I was a nonentity
and was coming on the coattails (if you'll pardon the metaphor) of
Mary Austin and a few others.
But Frank Applegate and she had a falling out —
V. Adams: Mabel?
Adams: Yes. They had a falling out.
V. Adams: Well, she'd had a falling out with anybody who wasn't under her
thumb, I think.
Adams: I think she was hypersexed —
V. Adams: And you and Frank Applegate didn't fall for it.
Adams: No, thank God.' I must hasten to say that my hyper was very different
from her hyper. [Loud laughter] Hypo too!
181
Adams: Well, anyway, the whole New Mexican picture, of course, is very
mixed. I think we got through a lot of it.
V. Adams: Well, we did go out to Taos. We did stay at Mabel's, and Ella
Young stayed at Mabel's.
Paul Strand and a New Approach
Adams: And that's where I met Paul Strand and saw his negatives, which
changed my whole direction in photography. This was after I had
done the Taos book pictures. Then I saw Paul Strand's negatives,
and the approach was something so tremendous to me that I literally
changed my approach. And I can say that when I came back to
California the seed of the Group f/64 movement was sown.
While other people had been working with the "straight" idea,
I don't think other people had ever stretched it as much. We made
it a bit of a cult, in a sense — that isn't the right word — what
would you say?
V. Adams: I don't know, but you all got together and said, "Now this is the
way we feel photography should be," and they talked about how to
do it, and what kind of a name to give the approach.
Adams: I'm trying to get the bridge between my experience with Strand and
my change of style. My change was very definite after that. I
think I was — with the exception of Weston — the first one to make
the change, and then many others followed.
I'll never forget one photographer (I can't remember his name),
when I did my Golden Gate picture before the bridge — 1933, I
guess*, and Albert had it published — a little printed thing to give
all his friends; he called it a keepsake. This man was perfectly
furious, because he said, "This isn't the Golden Gate." And it was
nothing but jealousy, probably because he'd tried to take it, but
I was lucky and had a good day and beautiful clouds. We've never
been able to find out what he meant by saying, "This isn't the
Golden Gate." Was it because it wasn't his concept, or was he
peeved over the clouds?
V. Adams: Did he want to see it looking the other way?
*It is titled "Golden Gate, 1932" in The Eloquent Light.
182
Adams: No, because the Golden Gate is as you come in — it's the gate to
the harbor, not the gate to the ocean. So for quite a time there
was a little conjecture on this statement, "This isn't the Golden
Gate." And it was a very cryptic statement. It probably was that
the Golden Gate was really mostly fogbound, and that we had a
glorious pile-up of cumulus clouds, which is unusual, and it was
a damned good photograph, and he hadn't made any one as good as
that, so he was probably jealous. And I never have seen a
photograph that carried quite those qualities, and I think that's
entirely a matter of luck, because I lived near there and I saw
these clouds, and so on!
V. Adams: How big a picture could you make of that now?
Adams: Oh, I have 30 by 40 — 40 by 60 inch enlargements. It's a little
soft. I used an old Kodak film, but I made the best prints I've
ever made of it just the other day,
V. Adams: Just looking at all these big things today — and the ones that were
good and the ones that weren't good enough — is quite an experience.
Adams: That's it. Yes. Now, I don't know why that isn't the Golden Gate.
V. Adams: I don't know why it isn't either.
Adams: Except that probably the man didn't like clouds.
V. Adams: Well, Ansel, did you use any of that in the American Trust book?
[The Pageant of History in Northern California]
Adams: No, I don't think that's in it.
V. Adams: He did a lot of pictures for the new Bank of California.
Teiser: When?
Adams: Within the past decade. I have three rooms in the new building [the
headquarters building in San Francisco]: the Washington room, the
Oregon room, and the California room. You go and ask, "Can they be
seen today?" It would be a very good idea to see it; it might be
interesting to see how pictures are used in decor in a room.
They're all stainless steel frames.
For the book I did for Wells Fargo Bank — that was the American
Trust Company then — we wanted "The Triumph of Enterprise" as its
title. And the one powerful man on the board of directors was the
stupidest man I've ever seen. He said, "I don't want any of that
crap. That's one of those goddamned phony titles. I want to call
it a 'Pageant of History in Northern California'." I had to give in
to it. But imagine: "Triumph of Enterprise" tells the whole story
so beautifullv.
183
V. Adams: Beautifully.
Adams: Maybe I should suggest they do a new book called "The Triumph of
Enterprise." But it was the triumph of enterprise. It's California
that was nothing at first, begins in gold, but that's only part of
the development. In fact, there was a very interesting discussion
in Yosemite that most of the gold was taken out of California by
the Spaniards long before they left.
V. Adams: Not most, but lots.
Adams: Well, there was all the surface gold. Much more gold than we ever
got out of it in our mining. They cleaned out stream after stream.
This is something which somebody's got to do a lot of research in.
And it was a hundred and something years before the Anglos came
over. But the gold was lying right there in the stream and was
perfectly obvious. And they left some until Sutter's man [James
Marshall] found it.
V. Adams: In Southern California they certainly were mining earlier.
Adams: They apparently were all over the place.
V. Adams: That is a thing I would need to have more documentation on.
Adams: Well, it is a very important thing. And historians shy clear
because there isn't more documentation.
Santa Fe People, Continued
V. Adams: Ansel, one of the times when you were at Taos, Becky [Mrs. Paul]
Strand and Georgia O'Keeffe lived in one of Mabel's houses across
a meadowland. And then later on you went up there, maybe to take
that one picture that you wanted to do afterwards, and for some
reason or other, Mabel was upset —
Adams: Said she had no room for me. And Becky Strand stood up for me and
said, "Mabel, that big studio is entirely vacant, and you put Adams
up in that studio." (Everybody in Stieglitz's group called
everybody by his last name.) "Or else!" And by gosh, I was over
there in a cot in this enormous studio.
V. Adams: But Mabel was just mad at the time, and she didn't want anything to
do with Ansel.
Adams: Very mercurial. But she was very nice the last time I saw her before
she died, and so I have —
184
V. Adams:
Adams:
V . Adams ;
Teiser:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams :
Adams:
V. Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
V. Adams:
They came down here to Carmel a number of times. And I guess one
of her last times was to get Robinson Jeffers and his family to
come to Taos .
Oh, that was a tragedy, because she got him and started putting
Robin on the make, and Una attempted suicide in the bathtub — cut
her wrists, but it was a failure. It was that kind of an intense
situation. If you didn't have a clinical approach to life...
Well now, what more about New Mexico, while you're thinking about
it?
To conclude the story about Robinson Jeffers, he went?
Yes. And wrote some poems.
He went down to Taos, yes. And his wife was so upset about it that,
of course, it ruined everybody's point of view.
Yes, that was really terrible.
After that, I guess, they went to Ireland once or twice, and they
had a happy time there. Mabel, for once, didn't really win.
Mabel was after Robin, and that was it. And Una wasn't going to
take it. I don't know what his attitude was. I suppose he — she
was a bedazzling person. I mean, you had this opulence and style —
I don't think opulence would affect him, but she was an intelligent
person.
Well, it was intellectual opulence. And Una was a very quiet
person — very intelligent and nice — but there was a very great
difference from the quiet of the Tor House in Carmel to this super
spectacular landscape and house at Taos.
Probably Jeffers just hid behind his pipe and didn't say much of
anything.
Well, you don't know.
We don't know. We weren't around at that time.
What sort of a woman was Mary Austin? Was she a commanding person
too?
She was a commando! [Laughter] She thought she was the most
beautiful woman alive.
Well, not beautiful physically —
185
Adams: Oh yes, the most beautiful and appealing woman.
V. Adams: Noble.
Teiser: Well, in your picture reproduced in The Eloquent Light she's
certainly —
V. Adams: Well, that's the most becoming picture I've ever seen of her.
Adams: She was very intense. Extremely intelligent. Extremely
opinionated, and thought that all men were just going to fall
right at her feet.
I think I can tell this story about Orage at a party at
Bynner's, with Mary Austin. This is really very funny. Orage, of
course, was a provocative person. He was a disciple of Gurdjieff.
Teiser: I didn't realize he was in the West.
Adams: Oh yes. We were very good friends, and I have an excellent
picture of him.
Well anyhow, they were at Bynner's and Orage was giving a
little seminar discussion in which he said he figures that the
value of literary work is entirely what you were paid for it — he
was that kind of a person. He'd say these provocative things, you
see.
V. Adams: Always stimulating conversation with him!
Adams: So Mary Austin said, "I dispute this." He said, "Well, Miss Austin,
history seems to bear this out." She said, "I dispute that." He
said, "Well, Miss Austin, that's what I believe." She said, "Mr.
Orage, do you mean to say that if I sell a production novel, or a
story for the Ladies' Home Journal, for five thousand dollars that
that's more important than my books on the Southwest, my creative
series, my creative work?" He said, "Yes. If you sold it for five
thousand dollars, I would say it was more important." She said,
"Why, Mr. Orage, I would rather prostitute my body than do that."
He said, "Don't worry, Miss Austin, you couldn't." [Laughter] Dead
silence! One of the greatest stories I've ever heard, and I was
right there when it happened. Oh, that's the kind of thing that
went on down there all the time, and Bynner was just about blowing
a cork. He was very, very kind, very intelligent, a very considerate
man, and he couldn't laugh. I could just see him sort of holding
back. That was really a great story.
Teiser: Was working with her difficult?
186
Adams: I never had any trouble with Mary. She wrote an iron-bound contract
on the book with the idea that among friends a contract should be
severe and nothing left to argument. Can you remember one episode
that wasn't pleasant?
V. Adams: No.
Adams: She was mad at you once, because you didn't have lunch ready for
the working man — that's right.
V. Adams: I don't remember that.
Adams: A man was working in the garden, and you said you'd have lunch, and
it was twelve o'clock and it wasn't quite ready, and she said, "Oh,
the working man has to have his lunch right on time." But she
liked you much better than most people.
V. Adams: I don't even remember that.
Well, I remember the trouble I had trying to get things ready
for the working men [in Yosemite] when I was eighteen, but this was
after I had gotten married. I just don't remember.
Adams: That's the only thing. Let's see — she was mad at me for something
else. Oh, I wrote a letter to the Yale Press saying that it was
all right with me to do something extra to the text of The Land of
Little Rain, but you'd have to check with Mary Austin. And her
letter to me was, "You have no idea of the terrible thing you have
done. You should have checked with me first before you wrote the
Yale Press."
V. Adams: She stood on her rights.
Adams: That was perfectly ridiculous, but that was the end of that. I
mean, we were all very good friends.
V. Adams: She was awfully nice to us; she was really.
Taos Pueblo, Continued, and The Land of Little Rain
Teiser: For the Taos book, did you show her the photographs and she followed
them with the text? How did it work?
Adams: No, no. She did the text and left me alone. The text doesn't
relate to the photographs. It's an essay on Taos. It's very good.
I think we really should reprint that.
187
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams :
V . Adams :
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V . Adams
Adams :
I think so .
I think Morgan & Morgan could do that.
Well, Jim Holliday was very interested in having the Book Club do
it.
I still think the artist
No money in the Book Club, dear,
deserves payment.
Well-
There are lots of things that you'll never get paid for anywhere
else that you could let the Book Club do, and of course, the Book
Club does beautiful things.
They do a beautiful job.
But when it comes to a person who's still a professional —
I still would like to see a thing like that done by the Book Club.
Well, it would never get out to the people,
small, tight membership, which keeps it.
It just gets to a
Well, that's true. But it would be kind of nice.
I think there's thousands of things done in the twenties, thirties,
and forties at the Grabhorn Press — like Mark Twain's letter to his
lawyer and laundress, you know — completely inconsequential things.
And done up by such as John Henry Nash in expensive style.
We don't have very many Nash things, you know.
No. I thought he was terrible; a fake. Grabhorn was one of the
greatest printers that ever lived. But if you were very wealthy,
you could say, "Well, sure, we'll let the Book Club do it, and give
it as a keepsake." But I'd like to see that Taos book done as a
facsimile by the Morgans, and I bet they'd sell twenty-five thousand
copies. And the people would see it, and I'd make some money. I'm
getting along. I have to begin to make some money and salt it
away, so I can — afford the papers that have my reviews in them.
[Laughter]
I have plenty of things that we could do. I have early pictures
of the Sierra Club, camp pictures, and groups of the early people,
and little episodes — ideal Book Club stuff. I mean, if I was just to
give my reminiscences of John Henry Nash — well here's the thing: the
Taos book [Taos Pueblo] . Bender had gotten John Henry Nash to agree
to do it. Bender said, "I'll subsidize it." I went over to see
188
Adams: Nash and he said, "Well, I've got the end-papers for it," which
were a great big stack of Spanish parchment — you know, Gregorian
chant music sheets!
"But," I said, "Mr. Nash, Taos is Indian, not Spanish."
"Pueblo, pueblo — that's Spanish." [Laughter]
So I went back to Albert and I said, "This is hopeless. This
guy doesn't know what he's talking about. We can't have a Gregorian
chant as the end-paper." He said, "Well, I guess we'd better talk
to old Grab."
Then there was a very interesting episode there, because [Edwin]
Grabhorn did not print that big a spread as a unit. He printed them
this side and that side, and for some reason they weren't lined up.
And so when Hazel Dreis begins to bind it, she finds that the pages
are misaligned; they will not be parallel in the binding, you see.
V. Adams: Does that show? Or was she able to correct it?
Adams: Oh, you couldn't do it. Grabhorn said, "Why, this is absolutely
crazy. It is absolutely accurate." She laid them out, and he'd
made them a quarter of an inch off. Well, this wouldn't do Grabhorn
any good. We just had enough paper left to print it. And he sent
it to another and larger press [William Eveleth's] and sat over its
production.
But even the greatest people, you know, can make terrible faux
pas. And he had never printed anything bigger than what the press
would take. So he thought that if he fed this in, then reversed it —
not a really work and turn system, but a reversal. And it wasn't
aligned. So you have to imagine that as the pages became misaligned
the misalignment would accumulate in the binding!
And poor Hazel! I remember the perspiration on her forehead.
She said, "I can't bind it. There's no way to bind it. They don't
pull. I'd have to cut every sheet, and put them in and correct
them, and that would cut down the sheet size." And she was
absolutely right.
Teiser: Was the book itself a great success?
Adams: Oh yes. Sold out, and it's worth a fortune now. I don't know what
it's worth. You'd get a thousand, two thousand, anything you want.
One of the rarest books there is.
Harroun: It's a beautiful book.
Adams: It sold for seventy- five dollars, I think.
189
Teiser: But then, on top of that great success, you turned your back on
that type of photography?
Adams: On that type of pictorial image. I didn't exactly turn my back on
it, but I changed. Now the difficulty is — and this is a very
important thing — I can't make what I call satisfactory prints from
most of those negatives, because they were made for another process.
That was empirical in approach. I didn't know what I was really
doing in those days. It was all by trial and error. And I can
print the "Woman Winnowing Grain," and the "Ranches de Taos Church"
and maybe one or two others — like the New Church — I can print those
well now. The others I just can't print on the modern papers.
They're not sharp enough; they're not decisive. That's why just
printing the Taos book again wouldn't work. But if you made
facsimile pictures — took them to an engraver to make a facsimile
plate — and did it as a reprint, in a smaller format — it could be
very nice, I think. It's in the public domain now, so anybody can
do it.
Teiser: You didn't copyright it?
Adams: It's copyrighted, but the copyright only runs twenty-eight years.
Teiser: And you can't renew it now?
Adams: No, no. In fact The Land of Little Rain is in the public domain,
and John Muir's writing. You could do a book of The Land of Little
Rain. You could do it by etchings or drawings or photographs —
anything you want.
Teiser: That was published in 1950. How did you happen to decide to do it?
Adams: Well, this meant so much to Mary Austin. I loved the country and
I had so many pictures of it. I'd like to do that book again; most
of those pictures could be much better reproduced. Because I think
that's quite an impressive book. There are lots of things I could
add to it.
Teiser: Were many of the photographs taken before, or were they done for
this purpose?
Adams: Well, they couldn't be done after the book was published! They all
had to be done before. But for ten years we thought about it. As
I say, the text was public — after her death. And the heirs have
no right to it. In fact, if there were any heirs you should
ethically advise them you were going to do it, but there aren't
any. That's an ethical point. Say that Ella Young had done a book
of poems , and I wanted to take the poems and make photographs for
them, I wouldn't have to pay anybody anything. But still, you would
190
Adams: feel, ethically, that perhaps her heirs would have some rights, so
you'd make a token payment. You'd put something in there for them.
But you can't do it in royalty. That's a personal decision. It
does not have to be done.
Teiser: The work on The Land of Little Rain, then, was done over a period
of years — your photographs?
Adams: Oh yes. Many photographs over a long time. And I've done things
since then of the same areas.
More Southwest Friends and Experiences
Teiser: You met John Marin in 1929, according to Mrs. Newhall.
Adams: That's right. At Mabel's.
Teiser: Had you known his work before?
Adams: Oh, very slightly. He was a funny little man. He was very shy,
mouse-like. And I met him first in a bare room; he was laying out
paintings, and they were absolutely beautiful. It was obvious he
didn't want to talk. And then you've read Nancy's thing about the
piano [in The Eloquent Light]. Well, after that we got along fine.
But I know that Marin would go out and would sit around for two or
three weeks never doing anything, just looking around at the
country and then suddenly distilling it, and in one morning doing
ten, fifteen, or more watercolors — using brush, fingers, thumb,
everything — just pouring these things out. I think he's one of
the greatest artists we've ever had.
[Interruption — discussion of details of coming exhibit at
Metropolitan Museum]
Adams: Let me see, there are some things in New Mexico — Well, much later
I did a series of pictures for the Boy Scout Camp at Cimarron.
That was left by a very wealthy man, who was a parody of rightist
virtue. But it was a very moving thing, and a very distressing
thing, in a way, to see busloads come in from all over the country,
disgorging these kids who'd never been anywhere with any mountains.
Cimarron 's is a low place in the Sangre de Cristos, east of the
mountains.
They would set up their pup tents, and they'd have to go
through all the Boy Scout rituals. And then they'd be taken out
on trips. Unfortunately it's a rather uninteresting area — it's
rather arid. There's only one peak that looks like a peak. The
191
Adams: rest of it's great Colorado-type slopes. I stayed there for three
weeks. I liked the story, but it was awfully difficult, because
the environment was so dry and barren.
Get a bunch of kids from Alabama and Rhode Island and dump
them out in the wilderness and see what happens. It rains,
thunders — oh, it was terrifically stormy, you know; the worst hail
storm I've ever seen was in Cimarron. I have one gorgeous photo
graph of a thunderstorm and clearing clouds, and the wind was so
strong that I had to hold the eight by ten camera down. The
photograph isn't sharp for that reason, because it's vibrating.
But we had hailstones right at the Kit Carson museum as big as
golf balls. And this terrible roar begins, and I'm in this place,
and I knew the car was closed up, and I said, "Well, here goes the
old Cadillac!" That radiator hood will go right to the moon.
Everything bounced off the car; there wasn't a single dent, but
it killed crops. It did a lot of crop damage. When you see hail
stones that big, you get a bit concerned.
Teiser: Were you photographing the kids too?
Adams: The kids, the camp, and the landscape.
Teiser: What was the end result of that?
Adams: It came out in the Boy Scout magazine — big article. Strictly a
professional job, and a very difficult subject to photograph.
In the early days, Frank Applegate and I would tour all
around. We went south of Albuquerque and way up into the Chama
Valley, and visited lots of places. And with my ferocious lack of
documentation ability, I just don't have any real record of it.
Saw a major part of northern New Mexico, and many moradas that no
longer exist.
The roads were unbelievable. At that time, the major
population of the villages north of Santa Fe was Spanish-American;
there was little English spoken. And the Spanish is a very
interesting Spanish, I've been told. It's a bastardized
conquistadore Spanish of four hundred years ago. They've had
scholars from all over come and try to study this particular
Spanish dialect that's used. And there were people at Chimayo
that had been to Espanola, twenty miles away, but had never been
to Santa Fe, thirty or forty miles away, in their whole lives.
I visited the Los Alamos school when it was a school, and it
was just like a camp in the high mountains with log cabins — big
log cabin buildings. I can't remember the design. But it was a
very remote place — a rather special place for kids. This was
called the Los Alamos Ranch School, I think that was the name.
192
Teiser: The Los Alamos School — was that originally an Indian school?
Adams: No, it was a boy's school.
Teiser: Private boys' school?
Adams: When the Manhattan Project came into being, they bought this
whole thing out; of course, during the War I think the school had
closed down. Well, what they did was to draw employees from all
over the area, and the brighter young people from these villages
would go up there and work. And that disrupted the village life —
everywhere. It created a different economic picture.
And now the villages are in, I would say, a rather horrible
state. Lots of delinquency, vandalism, nothing really going on,
nothing made, you know. Chimayo is the top place. They have
Chimayo blankets and the Santuario.
It's important to say that it's Spanish-American and not
Mexican, you see.
V. Adams: They have Anglos and Spanish-Americans in the Southwest.
Adams: And for many, many years — it still is, I think — the government
documents in the legislature were bilingual. But as I say, there
were many times when Applegate and I would go out to the remote
places and there wasn't one person around with whom we could talk
English. There are a few of the older people remaining.
V. Adams: Santuario was, I thought, emotionally very nice when we went this
time.
Adams: Yes, it was good.
V. Adams: There were people who went in with their little children into that
inner sanctuary.
Teiser: Where is that?
V. Adams: Santuario is a place north of Santa Fe.
Adams: It's called the Santuario de Chimayo. Chimayo is a town.
V. Adams: But the chapel has an inner place, a little deep hole with mud that
they feel is healing.
Adams: The hole didn't seem much bigger forty years ago — I don't know what
they do. [Laughs]
193
V. Adans: But here are these people — these Spanish-Americans — coming there
from all over the Southwest and taking their children in; they all
brought back little bits of mud. They'd have a paper bag or
something, I noticed, when they went out, to take the mud home in.
Adams: I remember, the last time I was there, I happened to come on a
very old Spanish-American lady, and she hobbled in and then she
touched all of these things on the railing, and altar, and gave
her Hail Marys in Spanish. And boy, she had a lot of stamina!
She went through that whole building and out the back. That was
her last visit — this was the feeling of finality. She came from
a hundred miles south.
V. Adams: Saying goodbye to all these things known in her youth.
Adams: Yes. Most of these people were very provincial, and as I said,
many of those people in Chimayo had never been as far away as Santa
Fe.
V. Adams: Of course, but that changed after they had the buses to go over
to Los Alamos .
Adams: Then, of course, the whole thing blew up and changed. But there's
still Trampas —
V. Adams: They still have faith in these places, and that's what was very
exciting to us. Beaumont [Newhall] said, too, it was very touching
to him.
Teiser: Has it changed greatly physically — the country and the buildings?
V. Adams: Fewer old wrecks and more tin roofs.
Adams: Very little; I was amazed. I think it's still quite a remarkable
place.
V. Adams: It's beautiful country.
Adams: Canyon Road and Camino del Monte Sol are still pretty much like
they were forty years ago.
V. Adams: It's like here in Carmel. We want to keep the artichoke fields.
In Santa Fe they want to keep the old things. They do pretty well.
Adams: Albuquerque is a mess, in a way.
V. Adams: Well, that's a big city now.
Adams: But where my friends the Newhalls live — La Luz — it's stunning; a
fine architectural development.
194
V. Adams: Modern adaptation of Pueblo style.
Adams: Oh, it's beautiful design — like nothing I know of, actually. You
can go up to Santa Fe in less than an hour. Parts of Santa Fe are
commercial, but still there are these old beautiful things to be
found.
Teiser: The quality of the light there — is it special still, or was it ever?
Adams: All of this "quality of light" business is an illusion in a sense.
Santa Fe is at seven thousand feet. So you have a different
intensity — relationship between sunlight and shadow — because the
sky is a deeper blue, because it's that high elevation. And the
reflection of the ground is different. It's a little lighter than
in most areas in the country, I think. Now apparently the quality
of the light in Greece is due to the fact that there's water vapor
in the air and there's a fairly soft light, and there's a lot of
white. So you get reflections and general illuminations. It's a
very intangible thing.
San Francisco has a special light too. When we test Polaroid
film, we get totally different results than we do in Cambridge.
Teiser: Even though all measurements are the same?
Adams: The measurements are not the same, that's it. If you design a
film for a camera for somebody to make a snapshot, and you design
it for Cambridge and Boston, for many days of the year you're
going to have a different quality than if you design it for San
Francisco or Santa Fe.
Teiser: What do you do then?
Adams: Well, this is one of the great problems. I mean, you get more
contrast. Out here, we always have — of course, today's a fog day —
I mean this is a gray day, but this is a purer gray than you get in
Boston or Cambridge, because there would be smog mixed with it
there. You'd get a little yellower light there. This is very
neutral light now. So, it's a matter — well, if you want to be
technical about it, it's a matter of Kelvin degrees color
temperature. As you go into higher altitudes, you get a higher
and higher Kelvin. The sun is a little brighter, the sky is a
little bluer, and the shadows, of course, are much bluer, because
they reflect from the deeper blue sky.
Then you get to a water vapor atmosphere, like the tropics or
Florida or the east coast, and you have a lower Kelvin, and you
have a little warmer shadows — a softer luminance range. There's
nothing mystic about it.
195
Adams: But Santa Fe gives you the feeling of being on top of the world.
It's at seven thousand feet, like Mexico City. Albuquerque's five
thousand feet. So there is a fundamental difference. There's less
atmosphere — I think one- third less — for the sunlight to go through.
You're getting about one-third the oxygen, maybe a little less.
That's why some people have trouble. The ballet came, you
know, to Santa Fe for a performance. The previous performance they
gave was, I think, in Dallas, and then they were flown to Albuquerque
and came up to Santa Fe and, without acclimatization, gave their
performance. They just collapsed, were actually falling down on
stage. Here they were going to the extreme of physical effort
which was all right under normal conditions, but at seven thousand
feet they couldn't do it.
And Stravinsky, when I saw him and heard him conduct his
Persephone at Santa Fe, was really- exhausted. But they warned him;
he'd been there about a week trying to get acclimated.
I get acclimated very quickly. I've been so used to altitudes.
You know, twelve thousand, ten, Yosemite, sea level, back and forth.
It took me a little longer this time in Albuquerque — a couple of
days. I can "pick up" very quickly. But a lot of people have an
awful time at high altitudes.
Teiser: Is there smog there now that you didn't see before?
Adams: Yes, there is. There's natural smog in Albuquerque, because that's
a rather big city. But the worst thing comes from the Four Corners
power plant. They're coal stripping. They've got one plant;
they're going to have five. And the one already puts pollution
out which is seen in the Rio Grande Valley all the way to
Albuquerque. And Durango, and the Colorado —
V. Adams: That's why they fight strip mining.
Adams: It's a terrible thing. In fact — well, it's not that strip mining
isn't bad enough, but it's the fact that they've absolutely spent
no money in smog control. They say they have, but when you see the
smog coming down, for the first time, to Taos, Santa Fe, and
Albuquerque, you know that there's trouble. There are going to be
five plants. It will be the largest single power producing area,
but I don't know what they're going to do when they run out of coal.
They've drilled deep and gotten the beautiful spring water, which is
the clearest water in the country, which it is assumed feeds the
Hopi Springs, and they're using that to sluice the coal.
So the whole Southwest may be degenerating to a point where it
really will be lost to us forever.
196
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams:
Better enjoy it while you can.
Teiser :
V. Adams:
Adams :
Yes. An unhappy desert,
there's so many people,
management.
It's very serious. But that's because
But who wants genocide? I'd rather have
Well, can you think of anything else for Santa Fe? Did you tell
them the story of when you got tight, and what Mary Austin said?
Oh yes. There was a big party at Witter Bynner's one night, and
I drove Mary Austin over. And then I got to saying, because I had
some consciousness left, "Well, who's going to get Mary Austin
home? I can't drive." I was very concerned that somebody get
Mary Austin home.
The next morning I said, "Well, Mary, I guess I lost my
reputation last night." And she said, "You certainly did. But
you lost it so quickly that nobody missed it." [Laughter]
I think I read in Mrs. Newhall's book that Ella Young was
encouraging you to continue writing poetry.
Which he did.
Oh yes, she did. Because I wrote very romantic poetry, and then
suddenly burst out into very avant-garde poetry, and then quit.
But I studied a great deal of literature and I was pretty good on
the sonnet.
Teiser: You write good prose too.
Adams: Well, I never should be known as a poet.
Teiser: Did Ella Young succeed in encouraging you? Did you write more
poetry as a result of her encouragement?
Adams: No. She said I looked like Yeats, and she thought I could write
like Yeats — not to look like him, but write at a certain level.
But that was not something which was accepted. Well, if I didn't
have music and photography, who knows? I might have done a
cookbook. [Laughter]
I remember one time coming back from a party at Witter Bynner's
very late, and it was quite a party. In the morning I go out and I
find a flat tire, and I open the trunk of the little Marmon we had,
and here is one of Bynner's guests all curled up fast asleep. Of
course, somebody 'd put him in there when he was very tight, and why
he didn't suffocate I don't know. It was a horrifying experience
to see this body in this trunk! [Laughter] I pulled him out, and he
was breathing, and he said, "Where am I?" I said, "Well — "
197
V. Adams: Horrible!
Adams: Yes. That was really quite a story.
Teiser: Maynard Dixon spent some time in the Southwest. That was not at
the same time?
V. Adams: He was in Tucson. I don't know that he was in Santa Fe, particularly.
Adams: Tucson is another story.
Teiser: When were you there?
V. Adams: We visited Maynard and Edie.
Adams: Maynard and Edie [Edith Hamlin] Dixon.
Teiser: That was later.
Adams: I did some work for Kodak in Phoenix, and then went to Tucson for
the Guggenheim project to do the Saguaro National Monument, you
know — the cactus forest. And then our very dear friends Maynard
and Edie Dixon were there.
Now Edie is one who can tell you a lot — Mrs. Maynard Dixon.
Edith Hamlin now. And she could tell you a lot about me because
we're old, old friends.
Oh boy. Can't think of anything else.
Harroun: Did you know Georgia O'Keeffe before? Or did you meet her down
there?
Adams: I met her down there. And then of course we got to know her really
well in New York after 1933.
V. Adams: Stieglitz, you know, gave Ansel an exhibit in his rooms [An American
Place] there. He'd practically given up doing anything with anybody
new. But that would be a long story.
Adams: The New York story's another story entirely.
[End Tape 8, Side 1]
[Interview VII — 27 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 8, Side 2]
Teiser: We were speaking of the Santa Fe period. You mentioned several
times A.R. Orage, who seems to have been a most fascinating person,
and I know very little about him.
198
Adams: Well, I didn't know too much about him. I met him in San
Francisco. He had been in New Mexico. He was a disciple of
Gurdjieff.
Teiser: I didn't even realize he'd been in America very much. Did he live
here in the later years of his life?
Adams: For awhile he was here, yes. I really can't tell you any more than
that. Some mystically-minded people are very much surprised. They
say, "You know Orage!" Orage was a guru, I guess, to many people.
Teiser: Yes.
Adams: He was also a provocative discussionist, if you want to use the
term.
Teiser: What did he look like?
Adams: He looked like a British orchestra conductor. [Laughs] He was
smooth shaven. I can't exactly remember just what he did look
like. He was rather intense. He had a very literary air about
him, but he also had a self-assured manner.
Teiser: He was apparently rather well known for having edited a literary
review in London.
Adams: Yes.
Teiser: Was he interested in photography, or all the arts?
Adams: I guess just in general. I can't remember. I did a picture of him;
not a very good one.
Teiser: Did he live in San Francisco for a time, or did he just come and go?
Adams: I think he visited — a month maybe; came to the University at Berkeley
and Stanford, visiting and lecturing. It's hard to remember the
details.
Let's see, about Santa Fe, I've been back quite often, and last
time, I had a good visit with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, and
appeared with Beaumont's group at the University, and then gave a
talk at the Art Museum in Santa Fe; and of course I'm a great friend
of Laura Gilpin's, the photographer.
Teiser: Is she still photographing?
Adams: Oh yes, she just got a grant to do a book on the Navajos in the
Canyon de Chelly. She's eighty-three, and still gets around with
a cane and a little arthritis. Perhaps you saw that wonderful
199
Adams: picture of both of us when we met at the museum — by a news
photographer — giving each other a smack, and we were laughing.
It came out on the front page of the Herald , the Albuquerque
paper.
Teiser: Was the Taos book — the success of it — a factor in your decision to
make photography your profession then?
Adams: I think it was. But of course I changed my style; but it did have
success. And Stieglitz was very much impressed with it. It was
one of these things that sort of proved quality. You see, one of
my objectives is to maintain a very high image quality, both in the
originals and in reproduction. So I have been quite influential in
getting the reproduction of fine prints paid more attention to.
The Reproduction of Photographs
Adams: We did develop, I think, some of the finest reproductions in the
world in San Francisco with the Walter [J.] Mann Company. Mr.
[Raymond] Peterson was the engraver. And that was for the letter
press process.
Now you have several processes: intaglio and raised dot, and
there's callotype and gravure. But the half-tone process means
that the image is broken down into dots of so many per inch usually
lined up at 90° but not necessarily. And in letterpress these dots
stand up like little mushrooms; they are like type.
Teiser: Your interest in printing is a subject that we've got notes on.
I came across an article by Francis Farquhar in Touring Tropics,
February 1931, in which you had a lot of photographs — a whole
section of photographs in sepia on brownish paper. Do you remember
it?
Adams: Yes. That's probably rotogravure.
Teiser: Yes. The article was "Mountain Studies in the Sierra." In the
introduction Mr. Farquhar said, "From the beginning of his
professional career, he has closely associated photography with the
other graphic arts, especially printing. In selecting the process
for an individual picture, he keeps in mind not only the quality
of the negative and the photographic print, but also the relation
ship of the picture to its ultimate surroundings. It is this
comprehension of kindred arts that has made Ansel Adams so success
ful an illustrator."
You had then long had an interest in printing?
200
Adams: Oh yes. Through Albert Bender I knew many of the printers. I had
tried various reproduction processes and made some study of it. At
that time, the so-called offset was a very bad process of very poor
quality. The letterpress was the finest. Of course, you could get
gravure, but gravure is very tricky. It is an intaglio process.
It was expensive and it wasn't really too accurate.
This is the American Earth and Cedric Wright's book, for
instance, were done with that process, and it's really not too good.
Teiser: Was that sheet-fed gravure done by Charles Wood?
Adams: Yes. Well, no, Charles Wood was much better than that. This was
the Photogravure and Color Corporation of New York. Charles Wood
was very good, but I think he realized that there were problems,
because the scale of gravure — certain tones had a tendency to "jump"
around the middle values; they'd go higher or lower in tone. And
the whites had a tendency to block.
Now, Stieglitz's gravures that appeared in Camera Work were
hand-done, and each one was put through the press and watched and
made like a fine print. It must have been a very costly process.
Teiser: I remember the Grabhorns used to use Meriden Gravure.
Adams: Yes. Well, that was one of the worst going for any continuous-tone
image. They could use it for etching or a litho or woodblock, and
they were really beautiful. But when it came to the continuous
tone of the photograph, it was just awful. The reproduction looked
like putty; it couldn't hold photographic values at all.
Teiser: You're speaking of Meriden?
Adams: Meriden. Grabhorn did a lot of reproductions that weren't from
photographs. He really didn't like photographs.* Whenever he made
a reproduction of a photograph it was terrible, because he always
did it with some kind of a soft process on rag paper. A photograph
needs a smooth surface. But the etching and the lithography, etc.,
Meriden would do beautifully I
*See interview with Edwin Grabhorn, Recollections of the Grabhorn
Press, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, 1968, pp. 59-60, and interview with
Robert Grabhorn, Fine Printing and the Grabhorn Press, Regional
Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
1968, pp. 54-58.
201
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser;
Then of course, as I say, the letterpress, the three-color letter
press, is the great Bruehl-Bruges process you see in the old
Vanity Fair magazine — that was really four-color where the red
plate is used as black plate as well and strengthens the image.
If you look at a color picture with a microscope, you see that the
colors rotate at certain angles. It looks like a mosaic. Those
of course were of the raised dot. But you get down to a minimum
dot size, beyond which it's just collapsible and it won't stand up
in the press. I think people don't realize that all the dots have
the same density of value. It's only the area of the dots in
relation to the white space that gives the fractional tones.
What's the highest screen you have used?
Well, the one that gave us the best results of all was the 133-line
screen. Now that didn't give as much definition, if you look very
closely. It's only 1/133 of an inch; one hundred thirty-three
lines to an inch. The deep tones wouldn't block up. And if you
stop to think about what happens, if you have no dots you have pure
white paper, then if you suddenly jump to a dot you get a "contour
line." What is called "highlighting in the forehead" — as sometimes
you see it — shows abruptly no tone to tone.
Then when you get into the two-plate offset, then you have a
very much finer progression of values.
It's two blacks?
It's two "blacks." And it's called duotone because at one time
people used color in one of the plates, and an awful color could
result. But if it's two plates — two blacks — one black ink may be
slightly warm or cold in tone. And then they can make exposures
of "long range" and "short range" and the two plates together will
hold a greater range. And that's the system used now. The letter
press is practically a lost art.
Walter Mann, whom we interviewed* and have known for many years, of
course took great pride in having done work on your photographs.
Oh, he did a beautiful job on the plates.
Everyone has said you had your own specifications,
are very careful, aren't you?
I imagine you
*See interview with Walter J. Mann, Photoengraving, 1910-1969,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, 1974.
202
Adams: Well, I tried! There's two ways: you try to make the print which
will fit the process, because the negative that the engraver makes
has to be through a screen. He gets his negative in screen form.
In other words, if you look at it in a magnifying glass you see
the dots of varying size. And that gives a certain limitation in
his exposure scale. It goes to a maximum of 1.4, 1.5 on the scale.
My prints go up to 2.0+ on the log scale: more than a hundred to
one arithmetically. If I want to make a print for an engraver, he
tells me, "I want the print value to be 1.4 and I can handle it."
He can intensify the blacks. He can increase the contrast. But if
the print range goes beyond the range of his film, he cannot hold
the textures in high and low values. The whites go bleak, block
out, or the blacks block up, or both!
Teiser: When your prints were being reproduced by letterpress, did you
always see the proofs?
Adams: Oh yes. I'd try to make the prints the way they'd want them.
Then they'd pull a proof. The letterpress engravers had the
advantage of being able to selectively "etch" the high values.
And we would work for sort of gray-whites to get all the values
therein, and then "etch" them; it raises them up to the optimum
point.
Teiser: That was where Peterson came in?
Adams: Yes. He was wonderful in that; a very sensitive craftsman!
There's a very amusing story when we were doing the Edward
Weston book, My Camera on Point Lobos. Body [Warren], Edward's
assistant, was watching everything with a hawk eye. She went down
to the plant one day, and there was this rather interesting picture —
it was just sand and rock. And she said, "Well, Mr. Peterson, I
don't think you got this one! It's really flat. It's original
sparkle is gone. I think we'll have to do that again." And he
said, "Well, Dody, you're looking at the original print." [Laughter]
He actually improved it. He made this image come to life. The
original print was a little soft; Edward made it that way. She
thought that was the engraving, and that didn't remind her of the
print. But here was the reproduction, which was beautiful in tone.
That's really one of the memorable moments!
Teiser: Well, do you make a different print for reproduction than you do
for exhibit?
Adams: Oh yes. You have to. In fact, when the prints are in the solution
they always look brighter and lighter than when they're dry. And
papers don't all behave the same, so you have to learn how to use
them. Then you have to say, "This is going to be reproduced and
203
Adams: I've got to keep it within the scale." That's why I have a
reflection densitometer. I can check to see that I haven't over
printed. Underprinting I don't worry about too much. I'll show
you something very interesting — [Walks away and voice trails off.
Returns.] These are proofs of a monograph that Morgan & Morgan are
doing.* These are good proofs. These are to be printed in New
York. The one of the tombstone is fantastic. This portrait is a
little too dark, see. Now we'll tell them they made that too dark.
They have to make another plate. The face is too dark, the shirt
is perfect. My print is all right in this case.
This one is one of the most extraordinary reproductions I've
ever seen. They kept the pure white and all the details on blacks.
But that was a soft print. This was a flat print which they
expanded. And they did beautifully on these, except this one was a
flat print, and they overdid the expansionl
Teiser: Is that the Golden Gate one you were speaking of yesterday?
Adams: Yes. This one before the bridge. But you see, this is good; this
is excellent, beautiful. This is a beautiful thing.
But here's where I told the engraver to expand the contrasts,
but he overdid it a little. They'll have to learn — so do l! I'll
have to give them prints that are a little stronger. Psychologically,
this is a warm tone, and here's a cold tone, and you see it's just
terrible; loses all life, distance; but from the same plate!
We're not going to make it quite as brown as that. To show
what I mean, this is just as clear, but it has no life. Now, for
instance, just look at the aspens —
Teiser: My word!
Adams: So, the psychological effect of color, well that's the thing you have
to know about. Talk to them. With engravers and most printers, it's
the same general thing. It's a terrible thing, to have someone who
doesn't know anything about quality come in and make remarks! If
you can give them a constructive pattern, all may be well.
Teiser: Did you do that when Lawton Kennedy was printing your work?
Adams: Oh yes, we'd watch everything. Crocker was very good that way.
They really printed very carefully, and they watched the press runs.
*De Cock, Liliane, ed. Ansel Adams. New York: Morgan & Morgan, 1972.
204
Adams: It would come off the press rather fast, and the printer was
anxious to get it right. You see, in letterpress many things
affect the result. The "makeready" has to be changed, and the ink
may change. With offset, once it's set up, it goes through very
fast; so you sit there, and they put a sheet in, and they run many
sheets and then you study the inking, and once they've got it,
there's nothing else you can do. And if that plate isn't what it
ought to be, it's pulled off and made over.
Now, gravure is on a copper plate. And in the American Earth
book, there were "four up," four pages on a side of a sheet. And
if you changed one letter of that, it cost seven hundred dollars
because you had to change the whole plate. But with letterpress,
you'd just lift out the plate, or the line of type; the corrections
were simple.
I had contact with Albert Bender and all the printers and the
Roxburghe Club, and many reproducing processes. So from the very
beginning that's been very important to me and my work.
Teiser: On the University of California book, Fiat Lux, wasn't that
originally to be done by sheet-fed gravure by Charles R. Wood?
Adams: That was originally planned, and it was done by Wood, for
Doubleday. You see, the University Press couldn't print it. It
was planned to have 286 pages, but Reagan got in as governor and
there was too much economy imposed, and everybody at the University
was scared to print it, so they turned it over to a publisher. And
in order to make it commercially feasible at the publishing level,
they had to reduce it to 196 pages.
Teiser: But the printing was still done by Wood?
Adams: The printing was still done by Wood. I'm sure of it.
Teiser: And by gravure?
Adams: Yes, and some of it's very good.
[Guests enter; interruption. Returns with book.]
Adams: Colophon says it was printed by the Cardinal Company, under the
supervision of Charles Wood. Designed by Nancy Newhall and
Adrian Wilson. But here is a case of approximate quality. You
see how granular that appears? That's really a very smooth
photographic image. It is pretty good in the whites, but certain
tones are not right — see those shadows. This variation in tone
wasn't that extreme in the original. It "jumps" in stages.
Teiser:
Does that do violence to your original?
205
Adams: Yes, it does, very much. There's nothing much I can do about it.
But something like this, just black and white, is just beautiful.
Teiser: What is it that's in the University Archives — prints or — ?
Adams: Proofs. I have all the negatives. And they have a set of prints.
They own the negatives, but I keep control of them, because they
want prints all the time. I've got to turn them over to them
some day. But as long as I'm around I'd like to make my own
prints.
Teiser: That's a wonderful book, I think.
Adams: It could have been better, but it's not our fault. The University
really tried.
Teiser: I suppose books are often compromises unless you publish them
yourself.
Adams: Oh yes. Going up in price, terribly expensive, mechanical
problems, paper problems, labor problems. We did so many things,
went through so many trials. That's why I have a very skeptical
point of view about the convention that things are better in
Europe. They have good craftsmen, but they can go just as haywire
as anybody if they're not under supervision. The best printing
I've ever seen has been right in San Francisco. In Japan and
Europe it's cheaper, except that you have to go there to supervise
it, and you lose copyright privilege — there's all kinds of tangles
in the thing.
Teiser: Working with George Waters, as you do now, with duotone, do they
do the same kind of correction of plates that the engraver can do?
Adams: Well, they can't, no. That's two-plate litho. So he's got to do
it in his negative. In other words, I've got to give him the
right print. We can't monkey with the plate as much as the
letterpress men did. It's very complicated. Waters is doing
beautiful work.
Teiser: Adrian Wilson said that they often do quite a lot of correction.
He said once they took an automobile out of a picture —
Adams: Oh, that's correction in the photograph. I have several photographs
that are very badly damaged. I couldn't sell a print that showed
marks and defects. Walter Mann Company has a very fine retoucher —
an "airbrush" man. He can correct my print. He takes out these
defects. You can't see them. You don't have any sense that
there's any retouching at all. There's nothing worse than re
touching that shows.
[Interruption]
206
Adams: We correct defects and spots. And it would be perfectly
possible to take out an automobile. You can do that. They have
to commercially sometimes. But if I have a fine photograph,
. I'm not going to take out something important but I might take out
a defect. Although, frankly, if I had a beautiful image and there
was a beer can in it, I'd spot that out if it had no relevance to
the picture.
And then there's all kinds of thousands of little things that
happen in photographs when they are this small; they look like
spots; then you take them out. When you enlarge the image, they
may become part of the structure and should not be touched.
Viewing Photographs
Adams: There is the famous matter of Lincoln's mole. Lincoln had a mole
on his face, and in little pictures, the mole looked like a spot.
When they made a nice 11 by 14, it looked like a mole. Now the
ethics are — you don't take the mole out as such; you take it out
only if it is not readable — just a distraction. The eye picks up
tiny little things all out of proportion to the size of the image.
Teiser: This brings up the viewing distance — and how things are supposed
to be looked at.
Adams: Well, that's pretty complicated. The standard reading distance
is fourteen or fifteen inches from the eye, and what is called the
circle of confusion or the disk of confusion is the largest disk
that appears as a point at that distance. When that's about 1/200
of an inch in diameter it's accepted as sharp. Some people say
1/100 of an inch, and it has something to do with the reading
distance. But there comes a point when normal eyes cannot see a
disk other than as a point. Then the image is "sharp." That's a
very great simplification because that doesn't always hold. And
there are several things that are always expressed as basic
principles but for some reason or other are very flexible.
I'll never forget in San Francisco, I had a 16 by 20 print
of a picture taken near Aspen. And it wasn't really sharp. It
was all right in 8 by 10, but it did not look right in a 16 by 20.
But a friend, Dr. Overhage, sitting at the far end of the room —
almost as far as that lamp — looked at this picture and said, "Why
doesn't that one seem sharp?"
Teiser: That's about how far?
207
Adams: Twenty or thirty feet. Now, there's no way to define a degree of
sharpness — it mathematically approached the disk of confusion
limit. Here, the illusion of sharpness brings in the term
"acuteness." And scientifically that is the micro-density
relationship — that is, the sharp difference of one tone to another.
The curve appears as an abrupt "cliff" from black to white. Now
with a picture that's out of focus or not sharp, there's no direct
transition. You take the curve from black to white, that would be
only 45° or more. Now you take a really sharp photograph and the
curve is very abrupt. The eye in scanning it senses this thing.
It doesn't necessarily see a disk and a point; it senses the very
sudden difference in value. It's like an electronic scanner on an
airplane at great altitudes that is used for photographic purposes.
The difference is there. I was making an enlargement the
other day, and I can stand six feet away, and I can "judge" that
focus. I don't try to think about it. I just scan the thing and
judge. And then I go over it with my magnifier and I'm usually
right. If I try to think, try to look at it and get down to see,
"Now do I think this is the grain or it isn't?" it's not so accurate.
This is a very interesting psychological factor.
Then the other thing is that the ideal perspective — say I
take an eight by ten picture with a twelve inch lens and make a
print, I get the perfect perspective effect if I look at it from
twelve inches away. If I enlarge it to twenty inches in length,
I can be twenty-four inches away. Well, I have a picture taken
with my 23 1/2-inch lens of the "New Mexico Moonrise" enlarged five
times — that's enlarged to fifty inches — my heavens, that should be
in correct perspective at one hundred inches, roughly. But I can
walk right up to it, within reading distance, and marvelous things
happen; the whole thing opens up. The psychological effect you see
is not just a physical — optical — one.
Teiser: When people read books the size of Fiat Lux*, do they hold them at
arms' length, do you think, or do they hold them at regular reading
distance?
Adams: I think regular reading distance. They hold them in their lap.
You see people pull a picture away sometimes, but that's to suit
the individual eye.
Teiser: Last Sunday, you were showing the students from Foothill College
a very large print of a bull —
*The page size is approximately 10" by 13 1/2".
208
Adams :
Teiser;
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Yes.
Well, wasn't that supposed to be a poster?
be way up on a wall somewhere?
Wasn't that supposed to
Well, it was used as such, and Europeans use a lot of stuff in
posters, and they make big prints, and they're hung on walls in
galleries. They have what are called "carrying power" when they're
that big. A subtle little print like one of the Polaroids would be
lost in a gallery of that kind.
But they don't care much for either print quality or spotting —
it's very strange. The Europeans have a very poor concept of what
we call print quality. They achieve things that are very theatrical
in a very intense way — a very human way — I'm speaking of the good
ones now, not the picturesque postcard shooting. But what we call
print quality is like a beautiful piano and beautiful playing.
They get the image and the meaning of the image, and primarily
through reproduction because people in Europe don't buy prints.
There are very few prints bought in Europe; very few fine prints
around. You see European people come with a portfolio mostly of
loose, unmounted prints. They get dog-eared and cracked, and it
doesn't make any difference to them.
If that big picture of Half-Dome had a crack in the paper, I
couldn't use it. I threw away four of those before I got one that
was right. That's our standard! It's just like if I were a
pianist I wouldn't let a record out with a false note. I might
make some mistake, but if it's obviously a booboo then I would
retape it. I don't know whether that's a logical comparison. What
is quality? A great many photographers think that my work is a
particular school of photography — very precious, where you overdo
the print quality; that that isn't really necessary; that the only
thing that counts is the image. Then you counter by saying that
the image isn't excitingly presented. It just doesn't get over,
it's not an appropriate or compelling print.
That bull picture is probably an appropriate print for the
way the man saw it. I can't imagine making a so-called fine print
of it because the image itself isn't a fine image. It's grainy and
harsh. I don't know what you could do with it.
Well, if you kept it down to a little tiny size, you wouldn't
notice it so much.
The photographer gave me that, and I should mount it, because it'll
get ruined. And as I say, it would be very good at a distance.
But now my big prints are made for another purpose. They're big
prints for their own sake, and you're supposed to be able to go up
close to them. But you can't do that with most blowups.
209
Teiser: I think you were saying that the prints for The Family of Man were
poor.
Adams: Oh, they were mostly terrible. That exhibit was a great blow to
photography. They were just casually made. The pictures were
selected for some theme, and the images themselves were mostly
disgracefully bad, and the prints commercially done — no sympathy,
no feeling for it at all. They were terrible. From our standards,
they were just "commercial." The exhibit put photography back
twenty years!
Now, there are several things that happened to augment this
thing. The average blowup is terrible. The whole thing is con
ceptual, a big idea may need big prints. You should really
photograph it — see something that you visualize as a large print.
Well, when you do that, you must have a certain optical precision.
If it's a poor negative, it just won't project. But sometimes, you
have tonal qualities that you can get by with an image that isn't
too sharp. But so much depends on the enlarging light.
There's quite a display up in Yosemite in the Mountain Room of
rock climbing pictures. It really is quite an achievement. They're
huge, and I know they're done with a four by five camera. They're
much better than any I've ever seen. They're relatively soft. The
definition is absolutely superb.
Well, I can go on forever on these things.
Light Sources and Light Measurement
Teiser: There's point source light, and then there's — ?
Adams: There's condenser light — varying phases of condenser illumination.
Point source uses a condenser; "point source" means a light of very
small area. The average condenser uses a frosted globe, so it
gives you a little more scattered light, but it still is primarily
columnated. And diffuse light is just light that comes from a
diffusing area.
Teiser: You were asking the students the other day if they used condenser
enlargers.
Adams: You can usually tell, because you get blocked whites, high values.
It's a matter of a pencil of light striking a small area of the
negative and scattering. A certain percentage of this gets to the
print and the rest is scattered beyond the picture area. And the
210
Adams: result is that the image of that particular high density is
proportionately less than the actual diffuse density of the
negative in that area. If you have enough shadows to hold low
values, it doesn't make too much difference.
When you get a diffuse light, every section of that negative
has myriads of pencils of light striking it; it scatters the light
but it maintains its diffuse-density scale. In other words, if
the negative scale is one to 1.7, then the image scale would be
about 1.7 on the enlarger easel. The print could be soft. If you
hold that scale, it would be soft. It could also be very rich in
development and toning and still hold the scale, but the actual
depth of tone would be greater. So we get up to an image scale of
log 2.3, which is one to 200 arithmetically. You see, the densities
are measured in log-to-the-base ten numbers. Some people are very
confused by it. I just sent a memo to Polaroid. There's some
people there that are a little mixed up. They've set their
reflection densitometer to zero (0.0) for the white paper; it is
really about 0.08. For several years, because of this setting,
they don't get the same measurements I do from prints. I've got a
well-calibrated Macbeth densitometer. They say, "We'll take your
density and subtract this." Well, that's all right, but — when you
think of the arithmetic equivalent, when you subtract logs, you
divide, so you're getting a variation of one value to another,
which can be a very perplexing thing, you see.
Well, the best explanation of this is if 2.0 is 100, and 1.0
is 10 and you subtract 1.0 from 2.0, you get 1.0, and that would
be the log difference and represent arithmetic 10. Now, 2.0 is
100, 1.0 is 10; subtract 10 from 100 and you get 90. But 10 into
100 is 10, and not 90. (Maybe this is irrelevant for your project.)
Teiser: What would be the disadvantage of translating all those into
ordinary arithmetic expressions?
Adams: I'm thinking very seriously of doing it, because — we talk in mixed
ways. The engraver says, "I want a print of 1.5 range." That's
roughly one to 32 arithmetically. So, we can talk about a range
of about one to 32. The Zone System would work out just as well
with arithmetic numbers. But H & D (Hurter and Driff ield) , who
developed the sensitometer, just established the logarithmic value
convention because it gives a much simpler curve than you get
arithmetically, although it can be thought of as geometric. I
think that sometimes people just perpetuate errors, because for
the life of me I don't see why you couldn't use arithmetic numbers.
I don't understand it. If you've got 100 and then 200, you've got
a range of one to 2. You can express one to 2 in logs — one to 2 in
logs would be a value of 0.3. If 0.0 is one, 0.3 would be 2, 0.6
is 4, 0.9 is 8, 1.2 is 16, and so on.
211
Adams: You get to read the curves easily. I don't have any trouble with
them. I can read them. You can get a lot out of just looking at
the curve — its shape. But as that log system is geometric, and
every step is 2X, I don't know why we can't call the steps 2, 4,
8, 16, and so on.
Teiser: Perhaps when everything goes on the metric system, all that can be
changed.
Adams: Yes, but they won't change that. But it will be wonderful with
computers. You can write in any log base you want.
That's why the camera can be a terrible thing. The camera is
now taken for granted: own the most expensive camera! You assume
if you buy it, it's got to work. The construction of them is
really a technological marvel. And the lenses are superb; nothing
has been made like them to date.
Technological Advances in Photographic Films
Teiser: You were speaking the other day about film bases and so forth. And
it occurred to me that you talked about the changes in printing
papers but not much about the changes in films and their emulsions.
Adams: Well, there's a progression from the beginning. Let's take the wet
plate. First go back to the daguerreotype and the calotype. Then
the wet plate and its collodion emulsion, it's sensitive to blue
light only, and it had to be exposed and developed when wet.
Collodion lasts a long, long time — it's perfectly good. But it
had that great disadvantage.
Then back in the 1880s they developed the dry gelatin plate,
and that was also sensitive only to blue light. Then they added
dyes to the emulsion and rendered the plate sensitive to green
light. That was called orthochromatic . The function of the dye
is that while the silver halide responds only to blue light —
radiant energy — the dye responds to green light, absorbs it, and
transmits an energy to the halides, an amount of energy sufficient
to reproduce images of both blue and green colors. Then came the
panchromatic plate which had green- and red-sensitive dyes. And
infrared requires another dye.
Later, of course, everything went panchromatic, although you
can still get ortho. You can make panchromatic film of ortho type
by using a minus-red filter. And then you can make panchromatic
film blue-sensitive by using a C-5 filter — which cuts out all color
but blue. The emulsions used to be fairly "thick." Nobody thought
212
Adams: of them as being thick, they were just that way. And they had
what is known as the "gamma wavelength effect." The short wave
lengths scattered very quickly near the surface and the green
penetrated, say, half-way (just for the sake of argument).
Therefore an image in green light would have higher density, and
then the red rays would penetrate much further. The contrasts
would be rather high with a red filter. That was apart from the
color separations. So in the old one-shot cameras, you took three
pictures at once, through the three different filters — blue, green,
and red. You developed the green image normal, the blue image more,
and the red image less to get the same contrast, or what is called
"gamma" in the negatives. And that achieved the required color
balance. Some of the earlier plates and films were extremely
contrasty when made with a red filter. White clouds would be
"burned out," and the sky would be very dark.
With Polaroid, which gives a surface image, you can use all
the filters and you get only a small change of contrast. You get
a change of values — the sky will be darker, the greens will be
lighter, depending on what filter you use. But the whites will not
increase in density to any extent. The shadows will be a little
darker with a yellow, green, red filter, because they reduce the
blue reflected light from the sky.
So most of our present film is known as thin-emulsion type;
one film made by Kodak, Super-XX, has the older characteristics.
It's quite valuable in some work, where we can expand by prolonged
development. With an emulsion we can't expand as much because
there is less silver in the emulsion. But on the other hand, we
get a sharper image.
Teiser: When did that change come about, generally?
Adams: I would say, thin emulsions, within the last ten years. I know
when I got the first thin emulsion pan film I was so mad I called
up Kodak and I said, "You put that on Kleenex! I can't handle it.
It just folds up in the developing tank! When are you going to
use a heavier film base?" They said, "Mr. Adams, it's just the
same film base, but the emulsion is that much thinner." They said,
"We are changing the film base. We have to." It was too flimsy.
You couldn't feed it into the developing reels. That may be a
great shock to people who always thought the emulsion was always
a very thin coating — whisper thin, you know. But it isn't; it's
quite a structure.
[End Tape 8, Side 2]
213
[Begin Tape 9, Side 1]
Teiser: As I remember, at the time the thin emulsion films came out, there
was some claim that they were of higher acutance.
Adams: Yes, they are. Well, I guess we can say that light scatters from
a silver grain at a cosine 4 angle relationship to the direct ray.
Some say it is a spherical diffusion. In Polaroid, the earlier
positive-negative prints, the developing layer was fairly thick,
so you had a loss of acuteness. You still would get all the
resolution; if you look at it under a microscope you see so many
lines per millimeter. But because the silver passes at an angle
through the thickness of the developer, a difference of point of
emergence to the point of exit, you'd see there'd be quite a little
diffusion effect. With the old Ansco Superpan Supreme, which was
a magnificent film in large sizes, when used in 35 millimeter size
you couldn't get a sharp image except with a very long focus lens.
With short focal length lens, the light would come in at an angle;
the loss of acutance related to that angle. And the further away
you were from the center of the film the worse the loss of defi
nition would be.
Teiser: Meanwhile, the speeds of the film emulsions have...
Adams: They've improved speed. But of course that again is, in a sense,
misunderstood. The emulsion speed is a pretty fixed thing, and
you don't change it by development as some think you do; the ASA
remains the same on the exposure index. I have to operate and
work with Tri-X at 250 speed to get the density range I want. It's
advertised at 320 and 400, but that's losing some shadow densities.
Plus-X is advertised at 125; I use it at 64. Of course this means
less development; you get a very smooth image.
Now if, say, 64 gives me a zone I value — proper density value —
and I want to shoot at 125, that moves the exposure to Zone II; at
250 it moves up to III, and at 500 it moves up to IV. And that
means I must increase development, so what is there is a general
increase in density in other areas of the image. Also an increase
in grain. You've seen many pictures where you have no shadow
detail at all — say pictures taken at night, groups in nightclubs
or theaters. They're actually empty shadows. They're shooting
that film at something like maybe 1200, and ferociously over
developing it, and they lost all the shadow values.
Teiser: I suppose you could be accused of overexposure and underdevelopment ,
but that would be a subjective judgment.
Adams: Well, at higher speeds, developed in conventional process, I think
it's Kodak's 8000, which is scientific film, there's not good image
quality. Land has the 10,000-speed film for the oscilloscope,
214
Adams: which does its work beautifully but it couldn't be used very well
in nature. Land actually had film at ASA 20,000 — could photograph
by starlight. Twenty thousand ASA is a pretty fast — you'd have a
hard time not overexposing that under any normal lighting
conditions.
Teiser: Are attempts being made to increase speed in a quality sense?
Adams: Oh yes, they're doing that all the time. But you come into some
very complicated physical laws, I guess — quantum laws apply. I
don't know; I'm not enough of a mathematician for that. But you
see, there are two big objectives. One is to get away from silver.
Silver is getting scarcer. Strangely enough, there's never been
anything as light sensitive as silver halide. And you know that
a halide is silver combined with bromine, chlorine, fluorine, or
iodine. And, there's been nothing that can equal that. They've
been experimenting with color-sensitive dyes and other strange
concoctions, and they haven't gotten very far with it.
Electrostatic photography like Xerox has got some continuous
tone, but it's not very good for general purpose; the equipment is
cumbersome.
The next step will probably be light amplification. That is,
a cathode tube like they use in astronomical photography. With it
you are picking up the impulse of light, and you can magnify that
as many times as you wish. You have it also when you g6 to a
modern x-ray fluoroscope. They don't look through you any more
and see your "shadow" on the screen. You're getting one-fiftieth
of the dose, and they look at a television screen. This is
because the very faint image that is generated can be amplified
electrically. That may be the next step — where you'll have a
very, very faint image which might be amplified in the camera or
might be amplified out of camera. We don't know. But it will
come.
Teiser: What speed films were you using when you started photographing?
Adams: Oh heavens, they were down to 25, 40, 32 — I think 50 was a pretty
high speed. Then they got to 100, and everybody gasped. The
picture of the Golden Gate [1932] was done on Kodak Super Pancho-
press, which I think had a Weston speed of 50, which would be 64
ASA. Pretty grainy, but it had fine quality.
Teiser: Those were the kinds of films that Oscar Barnack, who made the
first 35 millimeter "candid" photographs, was using.
Adams: The first miniature, yes.
215
Adams: I have made prints from old negatives. I have a print of Arnold
Genthe's picture of Chinatown- -1904. It was done with a postcard
Kodak, the film speed of which was probably 16. And this is as
good as anything Cartier-Bresson ever did. It's absolutely
magnificent. It is also a beautiful image. I mean, tonally.
We got a gorgeous print out of it. Now that was just an ortho-
chromatic film. And it was a very curly film. Noncurling it said,
"n.c.," but it was better than the earlier film.
"The Negative is Like the Composer's Score"
Adams: There's always this problem of the photographer having to adjust.
If I have a 35 millimeter camera, I see things a certain way, in
relation to that camera. And I would compose, if I were a
composer, for certain instruments. I wouldn't try to write some
thing for the flute that would sound better on the pipe organ. (I
mean, that's an extreme case.)
Then you go through all these processes. You just try to get
the image that you want. Sometimes you know what it is, and
sometimes you don't. You just feel your way. And a lot of photo
graphers only view something — they don't really "see" it. They
see you sitting there and they go "click." And then they have some
empirical experience, so they get some usable exposure, but they
still may have an awful lot of darkroom fussing to do. And many
times they have no concern whatsoever for tonal quality or
composition.
I had a girl working for me once who wanted to be a
photographer. She'd done a little work. She made some proofs of
my pictures, and I couldn't recognize them. Now, this is an
interesting thing. She had absolutely no print sense. Could not
make a print that had any value at all. And I was printing my own
pictures of national parks, and I couldn't recognize them.'
Because I hadn't seen them just as a picture of the Big White
Throne, but as a value composition. This thing would come out
looking just awful.
Teiser: When you have someone working with you that way, do you ordinarily
have a print to guide them by?
Adams: Well, I don't let them print. Liliane De Cock was the only one
who really made very fine prints. And Gerry Sharpe could make a
fine print. And I think my new man, Ted Organ, can make them, too.
But he just thinks mostly of the work in his own field. But I have
to make my own fine exhibit prints. Sometimes, with the special
216
Adams: edition prints, I can start it off, then have my assistant repeat;
but even that has a very subtle difference. It's very hard to
explain, to put your finger right on the problem. Edward Weston's
boys made prints from his negatives. They were a little more
brilliant, some of them were really "better," but in the main they
don't look like Edward's prints. They don't have quite that
feeling. It's very hard to describe.
I had to make an enlargement of one of Edward Weston's
negatives for an exhibit. I had the print — it was very good — and
he loaned me the negative. I had his print to go by. And I had
one of the most difficult times in my life trying to make a print
that felt a little like Edward's. I can make a print — no trouble
in that. This was a pretty good negative — not too sharp; he'd
never enlarged, you know. But to get that peculiar quality that
was Edward Weston's — to even approach it — was tough!
And the same thing with the Clarence Kennedy pictures of
sculpture. He had the most extraordinary feeling in the marble
quality of his images. I've tried everything under the sun. I'm
printing, I'm bleaching — I can't get that same "feeling." Of
course, what really happened is that he didn't process things too
accurately. In twenty, thirty years high values have bleached out
a little. The high values as they are suggest sparkle and trans-
lucence, which is in a way an accident!
Teiser: That brings up the whole point of what is a negative, and how will
it last? What should it stand for? What should its life be?
Adams: There's the recent trend (of course, like most trends, everything
is overdone) for the "archival" as they call it. People are just
going out of their minds in trying to process and protect the
negative and print images, making the image totally permanent.
Well, two hypo baths and selenium toning will make an image
extremely permanent. If you mounted it on a bad board or subjected
it to sulphur carrying boards, high acid boards and slip sheets,
and other chemical conditions, you could do damage.
Now, I have some of my earlier negatives and prints that are
fading; the ones made before we used the two fixing baths. But I
seldom find a negative, even some I developed in the field, that
shows deterioration. The early negatives, of course, were on
nitrate base, which was very dangerous, because under humid
conditions, if people didn't keep them properly, they would
deteriorate into nitroglycerin. Kennedy had a whole bunch of
negatives with paper separators in a drawer, and all of them were
in almost liquid condition! If anybody would come there with a
cigarette a dangerous fire could occur.
217
Adams :
Teiser ;
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
And I remember one time an air force captain, Albert Stevens, gave
me a great big roll of outdated aerofilm. And he said, "Look, I
just have to throw it away. So why don't you take it? You can
cut it up and use it. It's fine stuff. It's just outdated and we
can't use it; it'll last for a year or two if you keep it cool."
Well, I kept it around for three or four years, and I thought,
"I'd better dispose of this," so I took it out in a sand lot in
back of my house, dug a hole, and I put the cannister in it. I
had an old flashpowder wick; I stuck that into the roll of film,
and lit it and went to a safe distance. The fire looked like Old
Faithful. The thing blew up, in roaring flames.
The Cleveland Clinic disaster in its x-ray department was of
similar nature. The fire started, and then thousands of x-ray
films, of nitrate base, exploded.
Then the manufacturers changed to acetate base, which is much
more stable. The Golden Gate picture, for instance, has shrunk
over a quarter of an inch in both dimensions. The acetate base
has more stability.
Now Kodak has what they call the Estar base, which has
extraordinary stability. It's a plastic — well, so's acetate,
because they're all plastic of a kind.
We were looking in the Friends of Photography gallery here in
Carmel, at photographs by Frederick Evans. One of the captions
said that his wife required that all of his negatives be destroyed
on his death or her death.
No, they really weren't, because they've been making some prints
from them. I guess his son kept them. Well now, maybe they copied
his prints.
It said they were made from positive slides for projection.
That may be right,
copies from those.
There were positive slides, and they could make
I wonder, though, why would anyone want the negatives destroyed.
Well, it's a great problem we all have. Now, with Weston, his sons
could carry on his work, in a sense. Now, I have a great many
Yosemite pictures which are very valuable commercially for the
family. And it would be terrible to destroy those. But take that
white post and spandrel picture ["White Post, Columbia, California"]
I don't know who else could print that just that way. I have a
certain feeling about it, and it takes quite a technique to get it,
and if it wouldn't be my work, what good would the negative be? It
218
Adams: would be very easy to destroy all the negatives, except the ones
that have historic value or scientific value, or some commercial
value. But my "Moonrise" [Hernandez] print, unless it were made
by me, it would have no value. There are hundreds of them. And
so, if something happens to me and I can't print them any more,
what do I do? My Portfolio V negatives are all canceled. I have
an old canceling machine I got from the Wells Fargo Bank I
Teiser: That's the Varian portfolio?
Adams: No, Varian 's was Portfolio IV. Portfolio V was limited to 110
copies only. That means I never can print any more of the images.
The other day I found two or three prints, and I had to tear them
up because they're not supposed to be out. And I have quite a
number of them — extra ones that were mounted in case of disaster.
And they really shouldn't be around, because my contract and my
ethics say that there were just 110 things printed, and one hundred
for sale. But I have a few temporarily. For instance, an accident
happened to the one a client had; I could supply another. And I
asked for the damaged print back, and that was destroyed, and I
sent them another numbered the same. But I can do that up to a
certain point, you see. But I'd have to have the other one back
and destroy it, so there' d never be any more than the stated number
of prints available.
Teiser: So, in effect, the negative stands for nothing in itself?
Adams: No. The negative is like the composer's score. The print is like
the performance, but it's not a score that can be performed by
others. We say that. Now, of course, it's perfectly possible
that a photographer could come along and get more out of my prints.
But the question is: would it be me? And the collector, the
purchaser, and the expert, they want the original of the artist's
work. Whether the other person doing it would do a better job is
an ethical question that's very important.
Sometimes we get too precious, but it depends. I sell .a print
for, say, $200, $250. The price for a 16 by 20, after this fall,
is going to be $350.* Now, that has a rare value. I mean if a
person buys a print by me and pays for it. That person is not
going to be very happy if he sees another print out that's almost
like it but doesn't have my signature. That's an ethical point.
*After September 1976 it is five hundred dollars for all prints
16 by 20 or smaller. [A. A.]
219
Adams: As far as the creation of a photograph goes, if you can divorce
it from that element, then you should make as many as possible for
as low a price as possible, if you want to get the message around.
Clarence Kennedy, after all his sculpture pictures were out,
claimed he could do prints for fifteen or twenty cents apiece!
He'd have a student printing them. But I think he tried it, but
the prints didn't look like his pictures. There are all kinds of
pictures of these sculptures around. There wasn't a thing he
photographed that hadn't been photographed a thousand times. But
he got something remarkable in his images, you see — a "spiritual"
interpretation of the marble. Then the whole concept related to
the original art element, and the creative photographic element.
For instance, there are many pictures of Death Valley that are
much sharper than anything Edward [Weston] ever did. Edward didn't
worry too much about true sharpness. He didn't enlarge, he didn't
have very good lenses until the end. And it didn't make any
difference with the contact print — an old rectilinear lens gave a
beautiful image. But you enlarge it two or three times, and it
begins to "go to pieces."
But as I say, there's nothing worse than a very sharp image
of a very fuzzy concept. [Laughter] That's one of the illusions
that people have about Group f/64. Actually if we had stopped
down everything to f/64, we couldn't make many enlargements,
because at f/64 the diffraction patterns enter and the image isn't
sharp. It just has great depth of field, which gives an illusion
of sharpness.
Well, I think the reason that I went to the Art Center School
was to teach, and the reason that the Zone System was developed
was that I found that I couldn't teach anything but just the way I
did it myself. And, as a musician and teacher, I was trained that
you had to find out what the student had to say and help him say it
his way. Because all hands are different and minds are different
and feelings are different, so the function of a good teacher is to
draw out, not necessarily to make the student imitate. One of the
most successful teachers in Berkeley, Miss Simpson, taught with
two pianos. And that's one of the most dangerous things you can do,
because her students sounded just like she did. She would play a
phrase and they would imitate it. But a teacher like Benjamin
Moore, for instance, would never play for the student. He'd always
ask you, "Now, do you really think that you have fully developed
that phrase?" etc. And would give me other descriptive symbols,
but would never play.
Frederick Zech was a pupil of Von Billow. He was the most
incredible technician. When he was eighty years old he could do
chromatic double sixths which would put your hair on end. And he
would sometimes show off, you know. "I want you to get your double
220
Adams: thirds," — [makes a sound] "rruup," straight chromatic," and your
double fourths" — "rruup," you know. And I'd go home with these
things in mind and try to get it. But when it came to playing,
he would talk about the playing, not play for you!
I remember doing some Liszt and he'd talk about everything
in the world from pontifical moods to passion, to many things, but
he never would play. He certainly could play it. He had this
ability as a pianist, but he didn't want me to hear him and imitate
him. That wasn't the job. I had to do it.
Teiser: So he had to teach you basic technique.
Adams: Well, the technique and the style is very complicated, because
they're there and they guide you. That was the whole point of
getting the person facile — but it's so easy to imitate. Some
people play "by ear." They've heard something and they can
imitate it. That isn't true individualism in music.
Well, the same thing in photography. You can set up your
tripod, find the tripod holes in the ground your predecessor made,
set up and do the picture, and you may get just as sharp an image,
and with a lens of the same focal length you'll get everything
optically the same.
Then comes the other thing — what kind of a print? I mean,
how you carry the interpretation. You can lose the sense of your
substance, rock; you can lose the sense of light. I don't know if
I'm making any sense now. This is getting a little bit quasi-
mystical.
Beauty or Therapy
Adams: But the photograph can be beautiful and personal. I think the
sense of beauty in photographs belongs to a romantic age. I think
the contemporary whole art spirit is really negative to photographic
expression in the sense that I practice it (or vice versa) . Very
few people are making what we call beautiful prints, where the
print itself is a beautiful object. They're making images —
extraordinary, complex and sometimes very brilliant experiments.
The image may be interesting, but the print inadequate. The idea
is interesting. The actual print can be very ugly. And whether
the idea would ever admit to a beautiful print being made of it,
we don't know.
221
Adams: And of course a lot of the philosophy today is camera as therapy —
that was one of Minor White's points; presuming that everybody has
problems and is a bit on the psychologically sick side. You had to
explore yourself — little outgoing motivation. I think that bothers
me more than anything. The fact of doing something for the outer
world — as Beaumont Newhall said, "After all, pictures should be
things to look at, not just experiments in vacuum cleaning your
psyche." [Laughter]
Teiser: Well, it's communication.
Adams: It really is communication, and the communication depends pretty
much on the state of mind or the condition of your compassion, and
I think the trouble today is that there is a lack of compassion,
which means mutual understanding and acceptance. These artists
are so flagrantly — well, I could choose the word — dominating. It's
a very difficult word to find. It's not a matter of being selfish,
not a matter of being opinionated, but simply — I guess you'd use
the words "flamboyant insistence."
But one of the reasons that the painters have been holding
onto these big galleries is that they're painting gigantic pictures,
you see. Pictures half the size of the wall.
And I saw in Pasadena a beautifully hung show — a lot of
contemporary things which were just structures — attached to the
wall; some came out on the floor. And we had a joke here the
other day, because there was some photographic paper that had not
been developed. It had just been taken out — in long rolls. And
of course they've turned color. It's a kind of a blue and a brown.
So I thought if I could just set that up on a wall and exhibit it.
During the whole exhibit, it would be different every day. It
would change, fade and turn color. And it was just as interesting
as some of the [Mark] Rothko things. [Doorbell rings — people enter]
Astronomical Photography and Videotape
Adams: Now, this man that's coming in is at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
And he brings me moon pictures and Mars pictures. And he's a
fascinating gentleman and very much interested in photography.
I'd like to introduce him, because he represents another phase of
work I'm interested in, moon and the Mars photography. I have
quite a collection. He's Stanley Crotch, Ph.D. He is an analytical
chemist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. They come up
every once in a while to see us, and they're a wonderful family.
222
Adams: But anyway, the description of astronomical photography in plain
and simple form is complicated enough, but now we have image-
amplification and the radio telescope responses, plus satellite
photography; the computer numerical system such as used by the
Mariners where the picture is scanned and instead of an "image"
they send numbers — it's a kind of a super-densitometer — the numbers
relating to the areas of density of the image. And these numbers
come in a continuous stream so they can be picked up by the
computer and put in sequence and line. The scanner goes in one
direction for the image. When it reverses it transmits the read
ings of the instruments on board, then it reverses direction again
for the image and again returns with instrumental information.
When you consider the whole electronic image is about twenty
millimeters square, or 20 by 30 millimeters (and there's hundreds
of lines scanning in that small area), and it travels thirty-five
million miles or fifty million miles, you have a miracle. As
somebody said, the energy received is much less than that used by
a very small fly climbing up the window, and yet these pictures
come out with amazing precision and clarity.
Then the image is put in a computer and translated into
actual tonal values and can be "enhanced." The acuteness can be
enhanced by the computer. The first moon pictures were produced
that way. You saw the actual grains of sand and soil — actually
fantastic. Hence the illusion of extreme definition through
computer enhancement. That can be used in ordinary photography
too, I imagine. It's really quite something!
Teiser: I've been wondering about the videotape system, where you put the
image on tape.
Adams: Oh, that's a tremendous new field.
Teiser: Has it any possible future application to still photography?
Adams: Right now it is not so much still as moving. But there's no
reason it couldn't be still. The whole cassette concept has really
changed the world of television. Your live shows may be the
exception. For instance, we could have a converter set on which
we could show about anything we wanted, black and white or in
color. We could rent or buy tape. And we could have the whole
opera or a travelogue or a scientific lecture or a dissertation.
Anything we wanted, we'd just put in this device and it is
revealed on the screen. I've seen some trials and they're
absolutely beautiful. Now there's no reason why I couldn't go out
with a video machine that will give me an image, you see, on tape —
a creative image. That could be moving or static. It could be a
photograph of a photograph! And they did some very fine things in
reproductions of works of art.
223
Adams: The first time I saw this tape system they used a van, and they
did a picture at Glacier Point. It was a television series, and I
was in it, and I had to come out and talk. They had focussed on
the landscape, and they used filters just like I would. When
finished with this, they said, "Well, I think we have it. Would
you like to come in and see it?" I said, "Come and see what?"
"Come see it in this bus." In this little room were two or three
seats and a screen, and we saw the "take" and it was absolutely
beautiful! The mountains were clear and sharp. The only thing is,
my face was in shadow. It was out of the exposure range, and they
could not hold values in the shadows. We had to do it all over
again, with lights and reflections, and build up the shadow. It
was a fantastic experience; the final results were remarkably well
balanced.
All of that is one form of imagery, and photography is a form
of imagery. I mean, what is a photograph but an image? Now we
are doing three-dimensional photography. There was a show in San
Francisco by Michael Bry. I was quite impressed with these big
translucent panels hanging — moving in space with images on them.
I mean, all these things are very moving if they're well done.
First, they're all valid experiments in the laboratory. Now how
many experiments are worth taking out of the laboratory and showing?
The trouble today is they're showing too many things that still
should be in the laboratory. As if I would rent Carnegie Hall and
play the Clement i octave studies, you see. [Laughs] It's not that
you wouldn't have a student gallery, but I'm speaking of public
communication. Some things are so far-out, so far undeveloped that
they don't belong in exhibits. Too many of our exhibits today are
of that character.
Teiser: Is there any reason why you couldn't use videotape in a still
camera?
Adams: Well, no, the principle is — well, what is a television camera?
It's a cathode tube, which is scanning four hundred lines, or
something, per second. I can put it on tape; I can compose, as I
would a movie. I don't see why it couldn't be simply wonderful,
why I couldn't go out with this camera and a finder, and whether
this camera couldn't have the adjustments that we have with
conventional equipment. I don't know why it couldn't. They use
perfectly beautiful optical lenses, just about the same as camera
lenses. I'd never know the difference if I used one on the camera.
I saw the big CBS studio when I was on the "Today" show — the
lens, for instance, about that big (four inches across!) working
about f/2. Twenty-four thousand dollars for a zoom lens — some
fantastic figure — I don't think that's accurate; it may be a little
less. But it was a very impressive amount. And they're picking up
these images in color and when you see them on the monitors in the
television control room they're really beautiful. They're sharp.
224
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
So most of your color, and even black and white, transmission you
get is always of lesser quality than what you'd get in the station.
Except when you have cable television; then you have, of course,
much more accurate delivery.
So we're getting into another field now, but television is an
image process. Being an image process, it has a direct relation to
photography. And maybe the future of photography will be very
closely allied to this technique. And I would very much like to
have a television camera and do a tape which would go on a cassette,
which would be a creative experience.
Have you done any motion pictures?
Oh no, very little. I did a series in Yosemite years ago with a
Zeiss Moviecon, which was a beautiful piece of equipment. It was
like the Kodak 16 camera, and it had a shutter adjustment up to
1/1000 of a second, so you could take separate frames of 1/1000
per second exposure. I did details of water with a very high
shutter speed on panatomic film and had that developed in para-
phenylene-diamine, and had a print made and developed also in para-
phenylene-diamine . It was the most beautiful image you've ever
seen in your life. Beautiful color, warm, rich, and sharp. It
burned up in the fire we had at Yosemite. It was only one hundred
feet, but it proved a point to me. And then I never got back to
it.
Brett Weston is home,
tomorrow?
Why don't you interview him,* maybe
We were going to talk to Henry Gilpin —
Oh yes, that's good. Well, Brett Weston called me and told me he
was back.
I tried to get hold of your neighbor here, Dick McGraw.
Oh, he's gone, he's on a trip. Just left.
I'm thinking of — Fred Farr can give you conservation ideas —
so can the Owings . I think you ought to do a tape on both Margaret
and Nat [Nathaniel] Owings. They're remarkable people, and they
*A series of interviews with some friends and associates of
Ansel Adams was taped. See Interview History.
225
Adams:
have really a big background in everything,
in conservation and the environment.
They'd be very fine
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
At this moment, I'm sort of anathema to a large group of
environmentalists because I insist on using common sense, and I
won't get emotional about some of these things. I'm not a push
button liberal or environmentalist. I'd like to go on record.
[Laughs] Things are getting really out of hand, and the backlash
is going to be very distressing. People like Margaret and Nat are
very wonderful, sensible people.
You mentioned Garrod, and we'll try to speak to him.
Yes, Dick Garrod. He's the city planner at Monterey and he's good.
McGraw is good. I think he — well, you get another side. He's an
extremely critical person. We are very old friends, dear friends,
but we scold each other, so he probably will give you some valuable
but slightly negative ideas about what I should have done, and what
I didn't do, and so on.
Rosario Mazzeo, he's quite important.
Who is he?
He's a very fine musician, a clarinetist, and he was the first desk
clarinet with the Boston Symphony, and the personnel manager as
well. And he also is a very experienced photographer, especially
in wildlife. And he's going to do more photography, I hope. Don't
quote me — he's got a very good eye, but he doesn't know yet how to
print. I scold him all the time. But both he and his wife are
extraordinary musicians — she's a pianist. And Rosario 's quite a
force. I mean, he's a very potent gentleman. We've known each
other now for twenty years, and he can give you all kinds of details
of my life in Boston. I introduced the Lands to them, and I
insisted on painting their dining room ceiling blue, which they
liked very much because it made a terrible difference in the Boston
stuffy apartments. This was a kind of Italianate space. I said,
"Well, this room is kind of brown-gray dim. If you just take the
ceiling and paint it blue, you'll have a sense of space." My God,
Katy did it, and it looked beautiful. I kept my fingers crossed,
because I am no decorator! [Laughs]
Anyway, he's somebody you might see, and he's somebody that
really would deserve quite an interview in himself, because he works
very closely with the University and at Tanglewood. Big musical
background, very big. [Interruption]
226
Adams: This is Dr. Stanley Crotch.* This is the oral biography project
for The Bancroft Library. So if you have anything to say about
me... [Laughs] I've been telling them about my interest in
astronomical and satellite photography, and I have a total lack of
technical knowledge about it, but a great interest.
Crotch: Well, you've sort of come in at I guess the highlight of the whole
thing — the renaissance, if you will. And probably the end of it
for a while. We in it can see just another few more years of it,
and that's probably going to be the end of it for a while. Within
probably our creative life.
V. Adams: What about the brilliant things we read about in the paper the
other day?
Adams: Supernova, they said.
Crotch: I don't know much about it. It's not that we don't hear it, but we
really know little more than anyone reading a paper. And you know,
it's only when it comes in the scientific journals that you find
out a little bit more in terms of technical details. It's a very
specialized —
Adams: What was exciting about this was that this was a real supernova,
the first one observed for many years. Now with our knowledge of
radio-astronomy, they know how to really look at such things.
Crotch: Well, the whole field of communications — when these spacecraft get
out there hundreds of millions of miles away, it's no mean trick
to be able to pick up their signal — the radio signal. In fact,
that's the only contact we have with them. And the technology for
being able to do that is really an extraordinary one. Just simply
being able to hear something transmitting with a few watts of power
at several hundred million miles away.
Adams: And the energy that comes in is about equivalent to a gnat slowly
crawling up a window pane.
Crotch: A drunken gnat. lLaughter"] No, the whole technology of being able
to do that — and that of course has gone over into this area of
radio-astronomy — of being able to pick out these extremely weak
sources — is incredible.
Adams: She was asking about photography — extending photography into
different fields. I was talking about computer enhancement, digital
frequencies and —
*See also p. 221.
227
Crotch: I think they're only just beginning now to scratch the surface.
It's really remarkable that the whole thing has existed, maybe,
ten years. It's so new, and it's changing so rapidly as more
people get into it. It's very hard to see it. One doesn't see it
yet as a creative kind of thing, perhaps because the people who are
in it are basically not artistic as such, but are more scientific.
You know, the guys at JPL I the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena], when I mentioned I might see you this weekend, said
you've got to come and see some of the facilities they have there
for doing exactly what you're saying — computer processing.
[End Tape 9, Side 1]
Early Years in Yosemite
[Interview VIII — 29 May 1972]
[Begin Tape 9, Side 2]
[Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Mrs. Adams alone at the beginning.]
Teiser: When did you meet your husband?
V. Adams: I don't know — 1923 maybe. I don't know. You know, my father had
that shop and studio* in Yosemite Valley. Mother died, and I was
taking care of the house. And we had a piano. Not many people
in the valley at that time had a piano. This was an old square
Chickering. There was a ranger-naturalist named Ansel Hall, and
so one day he brought this young man in. He said, "I'm going to
bring in my namesake. And he'd like to play on your piano." And
I thought — you know, namesake . To my mind, it was the last name,
and I kept wanting to say, "Mr. Hall." It seemed to me to be the
natural thing to do. It took me awhile to realize it was the
first name.
Well anyway, Ansel was acting as custodian at the LeConte
Memorial in the valley, and his custom was to take photographs for
a month after this summer in the valley, and then go back home to
San Francisco, and he'd spend weeks developing all the pictures
he'd made. You know, there was no darkroom in Yosemite then. That
was just in the bathroom, you know — things were simple like that.
*The Best Studio. Mrs. Adams's father was Harry C. Best, the
artist, who established the studio in 1902. He died in 1936.
228
V. Adams: Then he'd go back to practicing again. He used to practice eight
hours a day in fall and winter so that — well, when he was really
going on his practicing, he'd start in the morning — his father
would leave for the office about eight-thirty — and then he'd go
into the living room and practice. (This was in San Francisco.)
And about ten- thirty he'd go out in the kitchen and he'd make tea
for his mother and his aunt and himself — that gave him a break,
you see — and then he'd go back until half past eleven or twelve,
and then it was lunchtime, and then he'd practice in the afternoon
too.
Teiser:
V . Adams :
Teiser:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Well anyway, to go back to Yosemite, he had no piano up there,
and he was delighted at the idea of having one — not to practice on
but to sit and play a little bit. And it took me quite awhile
before I realized that it wasn't only the piano that brought him
down to the — [laughter] Because I just really wasn't emotionally
ready to get interested in anybody, and didn't believe anybody 'd
be interested in me.
So he'd come down — it's about a mile, mile and a quarter,
maybe — from the LeConte Lodge to the old village. He came down
fairly often. He used to make the excuse that he had to go over
to the government warehouse to get something, and they used to
tease him about that. It was his excuse to get out and do something
else. [Laughter]
So that's when I first met him — and sort of the second year,
I was amazed that he was really interested in me. It took me awhile
to really respond. I just thought I wasn't ready for it. And then
when we did get engaged, I went down to see his family in San
Francisco and visited with them. Dad and I lived in San Diego in
the winter time, and so we'd stop by on the way up or down. That's
the first time I can think of meeting his family.
Was he photographing then?
Well, he'd go out for a month on a trip after he'd had the summer
in the valley and photograph, and then he'd come back with the
pictures. He'd go with some other young man and a donkey or two.
At some point fairly early he had started making prints for your —
Shop, yes. He did that. [Speaks to A. A.] Are you ready now,
darling? All right.
[In the distance] Not quite.
Yes, he did. I mean, after we got engaged. Here was an opportunity
to make a little money. Nobody had any money in those days, you
know.
229
V. Adams: [Aside] Ansel, I'm going to go in about one-half minute, unless
you can think of something I can do for you. I can stay —
Adams: You can help by correcting my dates.
V. Adams: No. [To Teiser] Ask me some more, I'm full of facts.
Teiser: What were the pictures he started making that you sold?
V. Adams: Oh, of Yosemite. Not so much of the high country, because I don't
think Dad thought they would sell as well. Pictures of the valley,
and nice delicate little scenes in the forest.
Teiser: Small prints?
V. Adams: Yes. Some were four by five mounted on a bigger card, and some
I guess were maybe eight by ten and ten by twelve, but nothing
like these big things at all.
Teiser: Do any of those still exist? Do you have any of them?
V. Adams: I don't think that I have. I don't know. We'll have to ask
Ansel. It may be that there are some. I know Nancy Newhall tried
to find all sorts of things from early days [when she was gathering
material for The Eloquent Light] .
Teiser: Incidentally, you asked if we'd like to see some of those papers,
and maybe sometime we would.
V. Adams: Well, I know she sent back a lot of things. We'll have to ask Jim
where he filed them away.* There were many things she took east
right in the beginning. Then they had a big fire in Rochester, and
there was smoke damage on some things, and things that I didn't
know what had happened to them turned up to be safe and came back
west again.
But I know there are lots and lots of things, and I've got
pictures and pictures and pictures.
Teiser: We were speaking this morning to Mr. Mazzeo...
V. Adams: The Mazzeos knew Ansel when he'd go to Boston, and I didn't get
east. I had to stay here and run the shop in Yosemite, so I didn't
get out very much. He said he's got a beautiful tape of Ansel's
playing that someday he's going to try to put together. He can't
do it now because of his hands — arthritis.
*A lot of material is now in my vault. [A. A.]
230
V. Adams: [Calling] Ansel, come back now; it's your turn. [To A. A. , who had
come in] Was that '23 when you and I met, when Ansel Hall
introduced us?
Adams: No, I think it was before that. I first came there in 1916. I had
been laid up with the flu, and I read [James M. ] Hutchings's book,
In the Heart of the Sierras, and got very excited. The family was
going to take a vacation, and I said, "Well, why not go to Yosemite?"
V. Adams: Was that the first time they visited Yosemite?
Adams: Yes, 1916.
V. Adams: Because they went almost every year afterwards.*
Adams: None of the family had been there earlier except my grandmother had
in 1870. We were there for the first vacation. I think it was four
weeks long.
Teiser: Was it as good as Hutchings said it was going to be?
Adams: Oh, much core so. Yes. But Hutchings had a definite control,
though — a mood. We took walks up in the Little Yosemite Valley,
and then up the Yosemite Falls trail, and I remember seeing Joe
LeConte running down with his family one afternoon.
Teiser: Helen LeConte** said that he said that you had met in 1916; she
didn't remember, but he said you had.
Adams: It was on the Yosemite Falls trail in 1916.
V. Adams: I didn't realize that.
Adams: We went to the Big Trees. We then left by way of Miami Lodge,
stayed there, and then on to Raymond.
V. Adams: They went by auto stage.
Adams: Coming in you'd take the Pullman at eight o'clock in the morning
from Oakland. You'd get to Merced around noon, and they'd connect
the car to the Yosemite Valley Railroad, and then you'd puff up the
Merced River to El Portal, which was hotter than the hinges of the
hereafter! We stayed overnight at the El Portal Hotel.
*In 1917, '18, '19, and '20. [A. A.]
**Joseph N. LeConte 's daughter. See her Reminiscences, a Sierra
Club interview completed in 1977.
231
V. Adanis: They arranged it so they got to see lots of scenery.
Adams: We came in early in the morning in big white buses.
V. Adams: Well, it's very beautiful coming in the morning.
Adams: Yes, marvelous. And we arrived at Camp Curry. And an old fake,
Mr. [D.A.] Curry, roaming around, greeting people and shouting at
night for the fire fall. It was real circus stuff. And we had
tent #305—
V. Adams: Oh, you did? [Laughter]
Adams: And I think it was that afternoon that I fell off a stump. I got
up on a stump which was rotten. I was trying to take a picture of
Half Dome. I fell off, and on the way down I clicked the camera —
a little Number One Brownie — and got a completely upside down
picture. Mr. [A.C.] Pillsbury developed the film — couldn't
understand how that picture was upside down. "What did you do —
hold it over your head?" And I said, "No, I fell off a stump."
I think from that time on he thought I was a liar. I knew him for
many years .
Teiser: Who else, however, could have got a picture at all? [Laughs]
Adams: It's a good picture. I've got the negative somewhere. [Laughter]
And, oh, I don't know... we did all the things. And then I
came back with my mother the next year, and that's when I met Mr.
[Francis] Holman and went on my first camping trip. Bessie Pond and
the Admiral. . .
V. Adams: Admiral Pond.
Adams: I forget. Bessie [Elizabeth Keith] Pond and a Miss Smith, a Scotch
lady. I guess the admiral [Charles F. Pond] was there, and some
other friend. It was raining; and, oh, Merced Lake was very dismal.
It cleared up that night, and the next morning I remember climbing
up the ridge. We camped between Lake Merced and Lake Washburn at a
bend in the river, and a big glaciated ridge, right out to the north.
I climbed up at dawn, and there were all those crags under Mount
Clark, all shining in the sunrise, and that "did it." [Pause] That
entrapped me forever. We didn't climb Mount Clark that year. We
went to Lake Washburn and Babcock Lake and Fletcher Creek Dome and
returned to Yosemite Valley.
232
Mountain Trips with Francis Holman
Adams: Then the next year I was there with my mother, who stayed at Camp
Curry, and Mr. Holman and I went on many trips. And an old
friend, Mr. Schu, a farmer, was with us. And oh boy, we did some
real scrambles. We got up at dawn and got going with our donkeys.
We would get in at dark and set up camp, and dinner was a mixture
of ants and cinders and hash or whatever it was.
V. Adams: Who did the cooking?
Adams: Everybody sort of pitched in. We had nothing but coffee cans with
wires as holders; we had one frying pan, the coffee pot, and
several kettles — tin cans only. And of course, they'd get all
blackened. So it was quite a job to keep it clean. And then we'd
travel or climb all day.
V. Adams: Where did you go — Merced Lake?
Adams: Oh yes. Well, Merced Lake and Tuolomne Pass and the Young Lakes.
One year, I forget, we got stuck out in the first snowstorm of
the season in October. We had to get out very fast so nobody got
stuck. Went all the way from Young Lakes to Yosemite —
V. Adams: That's a long way. That's a hard day.
Adams: We were a tired bunch of animals and people. It was terrible.
That was more than twenty-eight miles. And the first four or five
miles was through about a foot of fresh snow. And we were scared
to death, because if the snow got too deep, the animals would
flounder in it, and we'd be taking everything off and junking it
and trying to see how far we could take the animals without any
thing in their packs.
And on another trip we went over Isberg Pass to the Minarets,
and all around the Minarets, Mount Ritter, Iron Mountain, and Koip
Pass. In fact, we were often out of the park, in national forest
areas, but never got to the southern Sierras, never went below
Minaret Summit.
Ted Organ: Were you on the first ascent of any of those peaks?
Adams: Oh, I climbed one of the Minarets — but I don't think it was an
important climb.
V. Adams: That was before people did formal climbing.
Ansel bringing in the biscuits."
Camp on summit of Cooper Pass,
California, 1926. Sierra Club
trip.
Left to right: Admiral Charles
Fremont Pond, Helen LeConte,
May Isabel Wocker, May Elizabeth
Plehn, Ansel Adams, four donkeys,
Photograph by J. Malcolm G^eany
Ansel Adams, Juneau, Alaska, 1947
Photograph by Christine L. Reid
Ansel Adams, guest speaker,
Annual meeting of the Friends
of The Bancroft Library,
May 14, 1967.
233
AdaEs: I've got my name in a number of registers. At first there was no
record kept; I can't believe that people hadn't climbed a lot,
especially the shepherds. They were in the country for months at
a time. And all the packers, they thought we were just crazy to
walk. The people would go along the trail riding horses. They
were called "horse muckers." The real elite was the campers, going
along with the donkeys, walking.
V. Adams : What were you?
Adams: I was the elite. I was just walking on the ground and had a
donkey or a mule for my outfit. But the ones who rode, with guides
and things, they were "intruders" [laughs] and "softies."
We climbed all kinds of things. We had a very dangerous
ascent of the gorge east of Lake Washburn. And our technique was
just scrambling — we had a World War I trench pick, and long window
sash cords — you know, the kind that hold up the weights in windows —
which at that time were the strongest material available. We'd
just tie ourselves together with those and climb together.' Of
course, if you ever fell on it, you would just cut yourself right
in two; they were only about one-eighth of an inch thick! We had
no knowledge of climbing and we came so close to disaster so many
times, I'd hate to tell you.
And the worst of all was the gorge in the southeast end of
Lake Washburn. It's just a fault line on a cliff leading up to a
little lake at the top (it's about sixteen hundred to eighteen
hundred feet long). Holman said, "There's a couple of small chock
stones in there." Chock stones are stones that have fallen down
and wedged in the gorge, which was about 70° to 80° steep.
So we started out on a real scramble. We didn't think anything
of it at all; at first I could just go all day long climbing. I
guess it was kind of a tough place, and we came upon the first
chock stone. And there was no way of getting under it, so we had to
go up the face of the gorge wall. The top of the face of the wall
in that case was about as high as this ceiling, sixteen feet. But
at this angle, if you let go, you'd go down about two hundred feet.
Looking down was a bit distracting.
We got over that, and I began to tremble; "How do we get back?"
Because, you know, climbing is one thing, and getting down is
another. And then there was another chock stone and a bigger one.
Mr. Holman said, "Well, we can't go back, we've got to go on." So
we had to start climbing this wall again, and it was really pretty
dangerous this time. And of course, no one had an idea of how to
belay and protect yourself.
234
Adams: I'd get ahead (I was a little more agile), and then I'd sort of
help pull Mr. Holman up, but if he fell I couldn't have held him.
We got up over that difficulty and thought we were almost up, and
then there was another chock stone, and this was the big one. And
that vertical wall was something! It was about one hundred feet
high — straight up!
And we got over that, and we knew there weren't any more,
because we could see the top. But talk about being scared! The
feeling of being trapped at a late hour, and no place to lie down;
it was so steep it was hard even to sit.
V. Adams: Where were you?
Adams: This gorge east of Lake Washburn.
We finally came out on top. Glory Hallelujah! We decided we
wouldn't do anything like that again without knowing what we were
getting into.
Of course, there wouldn't be anything to it today. I mean,
you would protect against exposure. If you couldn't give a person
a safe body belay, you'd drive in a piton and secure the rope
thereto.
V. Adams: They didn't have equipment then.
Adams: Nobody knew anything about real climbing in those days.
Teiser: Who was Mr. Holman?
Adams: Frank [Francis] Holman was a mining engineer who lost an eye at the
age of twelve, and he had, with his one very sharp eagle eye,
remarkable vision. He'd been in South America, and I guess he'd
done pretty well for himself. He was an old bachelor. He could be
very crusty. But a very distinguished man.
V. Adams: How did you and he get together?
Adams: I think it was through Bessie Pond.
V. Adams: He wasn't at LeConte Memorial first?
Adams : Oh no .
V. Adams: You took that together?
Adams: I took that myself first for several years, and he came and stayed
with me.
235
Teiser:
V. Adams:
Adams:
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams
Adams :
V. Adams:
Adams :
V. Adams:
Adams :
Where?
LeConte Memorial. He had his quarters there in summer.
And then, I forget where he'd spend the winters.
And then my aunt, my father's brother's second wife, met him;
she was a professional nurse. And they became companions.
She'd read to him and write his letters because he couldn't see too
well to write.
This was after his strenuous climbing days. His eye was giving out.
So I was taking care of LeConte Memorial for several years, and
then he joined with me, and finally he and my aunt said they'd take
it over. Then I went with the LeConte family for two summers — or was
it three? — to the southern Sierra.
They could camp behind the lodge at that time —
Oh yes, we had a nice little camp there.
They allowed it at that time, to camp right behind the lodge, behind
LeConte Memorial. Now you can't.
We had a regular camp set up: kitchen, camp stove,
the donkey out in Stoneman Meadow.
We would stake
Finally they even got to taking a cook out with them, Aunt Beth
[Adams] and Mr. Holman. They'd come down here to Carmel for the
winter, and they'd take a house that had two wings. They each had
to live their own lives, and yet she was a good companion to him.
We took her on trips. One night up at Triple Creek Fork, the
coyotes let loose. She came over from the designated women's camp,
which was about (very properly) three hundred feet away, about
midnight. It was moonlit and these coyotes were just going strong!
And she said, "I don't care, but I am going to move in with you
men. I'm scared." [Laughter]
Then we lost the donkey. The donkey ran down Triple Creek and
away home, and they can run faster than we can if they want to run,
and Mr. Holman had a marvelous string of repetitive profanity. The
whole canyon ringing with a combination of entreaties to the
donkey and consignments of the donkey to inconceivable areas.
[Laughter]
236
Adams: Once the donkey got stuck on a steep cliff; we had an awful time
getting it out of trouble. Tied it to a belay with a hack rope,
and it fell down several times. It was belayed by the wall. We'd
get it to its feet, and it would scramble along the very steep
granite.
Now there's a trail indicated there. But that was a really
tough place to get up with an animal. Of course, I'd take every
thing off the animal and carry things up. The work we did was just
tremendous — just sheer physical toil.
Perils and Close Calls
Adams: For instance, we'd climb Red, Gray, and Mount Clark in one day. We'd
leave camp about four- thirty in the morning. Those are three peaks
in the Merced Group. That was a pretty strenuous deal, you know.
Lost the camp (many people lost Illilouette Valley) , found it about
ten o'clock at night!
That's the time we had the fall on Red Peak. We were going up
with the old ice pick and the window sash cords, chopping little
steps. It was frozen snow, it wasn't ice, and about a thousand
steep feet of it. About eight hundred feet up, I slipped. And of
course I started to slide — it was about 60° to 70° steep — pulled
Mr. Holman off his feet, and we both went down. He was yelling,
"Keep your feet front — front! Don't roll!" And finally we got
down. We were sliding face-down, and if you just touched your hands
to the frozen snow it would take the skin off. We were really going
awfully fast. And there was a whole lot of rock and snow piled at
the bottom, and we went right through that — but missed all the rocks!
Mr. Holman sort of sat there and rubbed the snow out of his eyes and
said, "Well, we'll go right up again." That was the best philosophy.
So back we went.
Then we came down the Red Peak ridge, and kept on the
connecting ridge, and up to Gray Peak and down that connecting ridge,
over to Mount Clark. Mount Clark was very steep stone and snow on
the eastern side. And the top of it was a little broken crag. It's
one of the great Yosemite mountains. When we got down to the base
of Mount Clark, we came out three miles below camp, which was worse
because we had to go uphill — up the trail — to get to our camp. And
everything looks alike in that place in the lodge pole forest.
So, let's see. What else did Mr. Holman and I do? Well, we
climbed everything around Yosemite. He was a great ornithologist.
One harrowing experience was in the Lyell Fork of the Merced. He
237
Adams: had a little collector's gun. He just hated to shoot birds, but the
Academy of Sciences gave him this commission for collecting. And he
had a can of arsenic salts with which to cure the skins. We would
shoot a bird and feel very sad about it. He would very carefully
skin it, and save all the feathers and everything, and then rub the
inside of the skin with the arsenic salt. And then wrap it all up
in some material so that it wouldn't dry out. He kept the arsenic
in a large salt shaker.
Well, one night at a campfire, we were frying some fish or hash
and it was quite dark. I got hold of this salt shaker, you see, and
I put some salt on the fish. And at that time, he threw some twigs
on the fire and the fire came up, and I said, "This is funny. The
salt looks green." I'd gotten hold of the arsenic, and I've never
seen anybody so disturbed as Frank Holman! He just took that
arsenic and hid it . But that shows how easy it is to have something
happen to you. He just had it in a salt shaker and, oh my!
V. Adams: Like the time that you were at Merced Lake and you had a tummy ache.
Adams: If I'd known it was an appendicitis, I would have died of fright.
I was in terrible pain. Drank a whole bucket of water, all alone.
A storm was coming up. I was not expected back for four days. I'd
been up to Isberg Pass and Isberg Peak, came late to the camp, went
down to get some water at the river, and it was just like a knife
sticking in me. I thought, "Oh, ptomaine poisoning." I felt terrible,
you know. All of a sudden. I'd eaten nothing but grape nuts and a
can of condensed milk. I was on the simplest possible diet. I had
this fever coming on, and this pain, and the only thing I could think
of to do was to drink water. So I just got a bucket of water and
went up to our lean-to and just lay there and drank; all instinctive
ly. And then about midnight the fever broke, and I was drenched,
and it was thundering outside and the lean-to was leaking. I was so
weak for a day, I could barely move around. I tried to get home but
could not manage it.
V. Adams: You said you went to the river and the bridge was under water.
Adams: Yes, the log we used to get over the river was under water for eight
days. I never would have made it home. That was for certain. So
I had the good sense not to get panicked, and spent the night, and
that's when I drank the water.
Then the next day I just realized, "Well, I'm all right.
There's no more pain." The day after, I returned to Yosemite.
was what I got at Taos in 1930.
V. Adams: When you knew it was appendicitis.
That
238
Adams: I got exactly the same thing in the morning — terrible pains. And
the doctor came and put an ice pack on me and took me off to
Albuquerque for an operation. But I know if I had known in Yosemite
it was appendicitis, I'd have simply died of fright.
Of course, the other tragic thing was, say, if I'd had a pill;
say I'd taken a cascara or something, that might have killed me. So
they'd come up and find me dead of natural causes in a wet lean-to.
[Laughs]
Teiser: Did you often go out alone?
Adams: Oh yes. That was very bad to do.
V. Adams: They didn't really talk about that as much as they do now; people
are prepared now.
Adams: You always tell people where you're going. But I just told my aunt,
"I'm going to Merced Lake. I'm going to try to climb Mount Clark,
and I'll be back in three days." Well, I got so enthusiastic. Met
some trail workers, and I asked them if they'd tell my aunt that
I'm going to stay two more days. I went up Isberg Pass. So if I
had not shown up people would have come for me. They would have
probably given me a day's leeway and then called the rangers or
something. But how do you know where anybody is? You just go to
Merced Lake country and start climbing. My God. You never could
find anybody, unless they were yelling or had built a fire or made
smoke in daytime.
So now we go off on well-known routes. I wouldn't mind taking
a trip specifically to Half Dome alone, if I could describe where I
was going — pinpoint it. Remember that time with the Sierra Club
when I said I was going to the Second Recess of Mono Creek? (There's
four canyons called the Mono Recesses.) I was going up the Second
Recess and cross over and come down the First Recess. And take my
camera, of course. I promised I wouldn't go anywhere else. The
only thing I forgot was — I hadn't looked carefully at the map; the
Second Recess was twice as long as the first one. So I thought I
climbed awfully high, and I got over a pass and went down about two
thousand feet and looked up. And there was the Seven Gables —
mountains to the south — and I realized what I'd done — I'd crossed
the whole divide. I'd gone over the main divide, you see. It's
just like having two canyons; instead of crossing over into the
First Recess, I went all the way up the Second Recess — a real
struggle! And the last bit of it was something terrible. I had a
bad time getting back to camp — tried one "draw" after another
because of cliffs on the other side. I never did get to the First
Recess. I got back to the Second Recess, because the First Recess
was too far to the west.
239
Adams: I got home about midnight, very sheepish. Because I'd given people
a lecture on doing exactly what you said you'd do, you see. And of
course I hadn't used my brain; I'd done exactly the opposite. I'd
gone out of the proper canyon — and there again, if anything had
happened, nobody would have found me. They would have gone up and
looked at the map and crossed over and looked all around that area,
which I never was in! I was at least five to eight miles off my
stated route!
V. Adams: It wasn't your fate to die in the mountains.
Adams: No. And I nearly fell off several things. The time the piton came
out when I practiced climbing at Benson Lake.
V. Adams: Yes. That was one of the worst things.
Adams: They had a rock climbing practice, and Glen Dawson was holding the
rope down in the meadow. It was a very long rope — a light rope that
went through a piton. It was set between a great big rock, twice
as big as this table, laying against the cliff on a ledge. They'd
driven this big piton between the cliff and rock all the way. The
rope ran through it. People would climb and get up fifty or eighty
feet and then give up and be eased down on the rope.
V. Adams: Everybody was learning from it.
Adams: And they'd fall on the rope, you see, and the man in the meadow
would hold them; then they'd slide down or start over again.
Well, it was about two hundred feet — 180 feet high, I guess,
with a lot of sharp rocks at the bottom. And I failed it. I
couldn't do it twice. I asked Glen Dawson if he would hold the rope
once more. I just felt I couldn't let this thing beat me. Then I
got up nearly to the top, and I was terribly tired, and I rested by
leaning forward on the ledge. It was an all vertical climb. As I
leaned my weight on my arm, I heard a tinkle and a sliding sound,
and down comes the piton with the rope. And the rope catches over
a point and sticks. If the rope had fallen it would have dragged me
off, because it was pretty heavy, you know — a hundred feet or more
of rope. Here I was completely without any support. One's reactions
are all automatic. I got up to the ledge by just sheer clawing at
the rock, and held up the piton that had come out.
And I'll never forget Glen's face. It was dusk. He just turned
white. This little figure down there with this white face. I still
remember that .
Well, then they had to send somebody up high and around and let
a rope down to me — two hundred feet or so, quite a bit. And then
belay it with a fresh piton so we could get down. That was a close
one.
240
Teiser: Glen Dawson the bookseller?
Adams: Yes. What happened was, everybody falling on the rope had levered
this rock a little, widening this crack just enough so that when
I took my weight off the rope (the crack being at a slant) the
piton just fell out.
Sierra Club Trips
V. Adams: Wasn't that the same trip where somebody — a girl — was drowned,
and we kept trying with the short-wave radio, which was a new
thing to carry along, to get to the rangers?
Adams: Yes. She fell in Benson Lake. Oh, we had a lot of accidents.
I remember two fatal and two bad falling near-fatalities, and
plenty of heart attacks, intestinal obstructions and double
pneumonia, etc.
V. Adams: That belongs in Sierra Club history.
Adams: We always had a doctor. We always brought an intern along as a
camp doctor, but then we had some very fine practitioners who
were guests, and of course in an emergency they'd come out and
help — Dr. Walter Alvarez and Dr. Herbert Evans, for example.
I remember one time, a man was climbing, and put his hand up,
and somebody was up ahead. That's very bad too, to climb too close
ahead. He loosened this rock, and it came down and hit him right
in the hand, literally went through his hand — broke everything.
So this poor guy — we had to get him down to camp.
The intern was really having a fit. He was just a medical
student, he wasn't even an intern. And the nurse said, "Well,
just get hot saline water and keep it wrapped in it." They had
to tell him to get out as quick as he could and apply these
compresses constantly. In those days, you know, they didn't have
penicillin or anything.
V. Adams: The packers would take them out.
Adams: They'd strap them on the saddle and lead them out, and they'd
have to go many miles.
V. Adams: They'd have to go to Lone Pine or to Sequoia National Park.
241
Adams: But this man kept the use of his hand. They had to practically
rebuild that hand. It just shows you what can happen. Now, if
you were alone, or it was just a small part, you can imagine what
might happen.
Well , they did have that awful thing years ago in the Palisade
basin, where a woman was climbing the North Palisade. While in the
talus, one of those huge rocks rolled over and caught her, right
on the pelvic area and broke both pelvic bones. So they had to
improvise a stretcher and carried her with great difficulty more
than three miles above timber line to the trail. It was the
roughest possible terrain. She was pretty well crippled for life.
I remember Mr. [William E. ] Colby telling me that. It took five
days in all to get her to the Owens Valley.
Then a woman had a heart attack when we were near Ralph
Merritt's camp. The woman knew she had a heart condition and
asked the packer if he thought she'd get along all right. Well,
how did he know? He wasn't any doctor. We had horses anyway.
I forget what it was — some form of heart failure. She got up to
Sphinx Pass and practically passed out from the attack. She was
six weeks in Ralph Merritt's camp, and finally the doctors came in
and said, "Well, I think we can take you out now." And it was a
two thousand foot climb back over Sphinx Pass. When she got there
(with less oxygen) she expired right on top of the pass.
V. Adams: You know what I remember about that is that all of these young
husky boys who were part of a rescue group, in groups of four
carrying the litter down the slope, and they'd change take-over
after a little while, carrying her down. She'd had six weeks or
four weeks or however long it was down at that camp in the flat-
lands, but those boys just worked like mad to get her there and
also to get her out. It was just so sad, because everybody tried
so hard, and then when the final thing happened, it wasn't any
good after all.
Adams: I don't want to give the impression that we had nothing but
disaster, but —
V. Adams: No. We had lots of wonderful things.
Adams: Always things may happen in an outing of one hundred or two
hundred people.
V. Adams: People have gone on long trips and nothing has happened.
Adams: But I think we — well, we had that case of old Mr. Padway, who
saved up for several years for this big vacation. He was some
kind of a specialist and couldn't get away from work, and finally
242
Adams: he did and this was a four-weeks vacation. We were up at Milestone
Camp, which is over eleven thousand feet, and he had this very bad
cold; it was freezing, and the camp doctor didn't like the way he
sounded. I think Dr. Alvarez came to see him, and they got
another doctor and they listened, and then they came over to see
us. They said, "He's got pneumonia, and if you don't get him out
of here, he'll be dead in twelve hours because of this altitude."
(Low oxygen.) They said, "It's very important. You'll have to
get him out some way." Of course, that was before helicopters.
So [Clair S.] Tappaan and I went to him and said, "Well, Mr.
Padway, we're really sorry, but the doctors have ordered you out
and we'll have to make arrangements right now to bundle you up and
get you on a horse."
"What! I've got nothing but a bad cold. I'll be over this
in a day or so." (Cough, cough)
"Well," we said, "the doctors don't say that. They said you
have pneumonia. "
He said, "I refuse to believe it, and you'll have to order me
out."
We said, "Well, we'll have to send you out."
He said, "If you do that, I'll sue you."
Tap was a lawyer, so I said, "Well?" We went back to the
doctors and told them. They said, "We'll give you an affidavit.
If you don't get him out of here, in eight hours he'll be dead."
So we got him to Fresno, and he just barely made it. And his
letter of apology was touching, because he felt that he caused all
this trouble. They did save his life, and our insistence was
important. But he never realized it at the time. He didn't want
to realize it. It would spoil his trip.
V. Adams: There was one treck — I wasn't on this trip — when you went across
country and it was very high and very cold, and a couple of people
nearly didn't make it. The altitude and the whole thing got them.
But outside of that, when you think one hundred people go every
summer on these trips for forty years and most of them do
beautifully.
Adams: Well, it's not a compensation, you see. Your oxygen supply goes
down. In Yosemite you have three-quarters normal, I think, and
you get up to Glacier Point — eight thousand or nine thousand,
somewhere in there — you only have about half. No, it's more
nearly ten thousand that you have half. And it diminishes as
altitude increases.
243
Adams: Well, I can compensate very quickly, because I'm always going from
high to low altitudes. But for some people it takes several days.
And this mountain sickness is just sort of a breakdown of body
functions, because there just isn't really enough oxygen for them.
Everything is knocked out of sync. The heart has an automatic
trigger device, and if it works too hard, it automatically just
slows up, or may temporarily fail. It doesn't mean there's
definite damage. But you can have some awful symptoms. People
have passed out absolutely cold and go into what appears to be a
deep faint. And only a doctor can tell whether it's a state of
shock or not.
Teiser: What was your position on those trips?
Adams: I was after 1930 the assistant manager. I went first in 1923 for
a week, and then didn't go again until 1927. And 1927 I was the
photographer, and I was taken along to make pictures. That was in
the Sequoia National Park area, the High Sierra back country. In
1928 we went to Canada. I was the photographer and helped, and
Mr. Colby was the leader. In 1929 I didn't go anywhere. They
went to Yellowstone, I think. In 1930 I was back assisting Clair
Tappaan as manager. I was in charge of personnel, mountain
climbing, and lost and found, and morals committee. [Laughter]
So, that was my job, and it really was something, because I'd
be up very early in the morning, and I'd try to make some
photographs, and I'd have to see that people got off and their
bags were ready to pack. Then I would have to go ahead, at a
rather fast rate, to pick out the campsites and the commissary
location and the latrines. And I'd always divide up the camps —
men, women, married couples — try to figure it out logically. I'd
get that done. Then I'd go off and try to make some photographs.
Of course, I did many on the trail, too. Then in the evening I
had to conduct the campfire and run the lost and found. And of
course the lost and found could be serious, because somebody would
leave something like his watch or a pill — you know, you don't have
much of un-importance when you're out in the wilderness. We'd
have a bag, and some of the things we'd find in it were surprising!
Glasses, prescription bottle, a toothbrush, etc., etc.
I can report now that the worst hike I ever had was when we
left Woods Creek and went to Rae Lake. We were going to camp at
Rae Lake and go over Glen Pass to Center Basin the next day. I
had a very nice Dagor lens. It was what we call a convertible —
symmetrical lens. In other words, you could unscrew the front
element or the back element and get one and a half or twice the
size of the full-lens image. It was really three lenses in one.
I'd taken a picture in Woods Creek Camp, leaving camp in the
morning in the usual hurry. When I got to Rae Lake, I realized
244
Adams: I'd left the back of the lens on a rock at Woods Creek, and I
could see in my mind's eye just where that lens was. Of course
animals could have nudged it off or got it — but my whole
photography depended on this lens (it was the only one I had on
the trip). So after dinner I said I had to go back the twelve
miles. So I hiked down there as fast as I could, with a flash
light, and by gosh, there was the rock and there was the lens.
And I ate some hardtack and a piece of chocolate, and I came back
the twelve miles to Rae Lake. That made it thirty-six miles for
that day.
But I got back in the morning after the camp was broken up —
gone. So I had this climb of nearly twelve thousand feet over
Glen Pass to Center Basin, which was about fourteen miles down.
So I had walked a total of about fifty miles!
And all I can say is I'm glad they didn't move camp the next
day. But those were the days when I could do such things. I
could have done another ten miles. I was just terribly tired and
footsore. But I used to time myself walking. Even with a pack,
on the level I could go almost five miles an hour. Usually on a
long trip, I used to keep to about four. Mr. Colby had a wonderful
system of starting in the morning at a very slow pace, and the
people with him would get exasperated because old Will would plod
along. Then he'd get plodding a little faster, you see. And he'd
never stop; he'd just go all day long. And all the guys would be
dashing ahead — the young squirts, you know, racing for the next
camp. And we'd pass them lying down on the ground, gasping. And
Colby, at sixty-something, was still plodding along, with a nice,
good-sized pack. [Laughter] It's a matter of just accommodating
and working into a pattern.
Yosemite, Continued
Adams: Well, I think now we've skipped away from Yosemite. Now, the
early days in Yosemite are associated for me with the LeConte
Memorial. They had just moved it from the Camp Curry area. It
used to be called the Lodge. Lodge was the wrong description.
I mean nobody ever slept in it. Well, they did, but it wasn't
supposed to be for that purpose. It was first in the Camp Curry
area, and when they expanded Curry they found that this building
would be right in the middle of it. So they offered to rebuild
the Memorial for the Sierra Club in a near location to the west.
Mr. Colby and a few others came up and picked the site, where
it is now, where you got a beautiful view up to Tenaya Canyon. The
trees in front were ten to fifteen feet high. They were young
245
Adams :
Teiser
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Adams:
cedars and pines. You'd look over this very small growth and
see the whole vista of Washington Column, Tenaya Canyon and Half
Dome. It was a grand view.
Now the trees are nearly a hundred feet high, and you can't
see anything at all. It just shows how things grow and change
in time. They always had a "custodian." There were a few dried
plants and a few books and information available.
How old were you when you became custodian?
I'm always two years behind the century. That would be 1919 when
I was at the Lodge alone. I'd take people out on trips.
That was a lot of responsibility for a young man.
Yes, that's true. Then, after that, Aunt Beth and Uncle Frank
joined me. I climbed around a lot.
Did you always carry cameras with you?
Oh, almost all of my trips. Usually a 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 or a four
by five — fairly simple. But my pack would be about fifty pounds.
I also carried my tripod, and a good tripod weighs about ten
pounds. And then there were the lenses and the film holders and
the accessories, and lunch. A notebook and maybe a brass cylinder
for a mountain-top register, the Sierra Club register.
I remember bringing down the early records of Clarence King
from Mount Clark after putting up a new register. And somebody
stole that record that was priceless; the first notes of King.
I had them at the LeConte Lodge in an envelope, clearly indicating
that they were important records, and I was going to send them to
San Francisco. And one day I found they were gone!
[End Tape 9, Side 2]
[Begin Tape 10, Side 1]
Well, to go back to the Clarence King episode. Mount Clark used
to be called Gothic Peak, which is a better name for it. It's
a triple glacial cirque. It's unique, and a very handsome mountain.
Clarence King's description of his ascent of Mount Clark is very
harrowing. Nobody 'd been able to find the place he made his
famous "jump." I went all over the summit area, hanging down on
ropes and trying to find the place. We say now there was
probably a rock slide that's obliterated it. But everybody in
those days could really exaggerate their experiences. The
painters did and the writers did and the explorers did; it was
always a great wild wilderness — hard to check up on!
246
Adams: The place that he described, in considerable detail, where he
makes his "leap over the abyss" — it might have been big enough
to kill him if he fell. I mean, you don't have to fall very far
on granite. Well anyway, up at the top he had left this lead
container — in pretty bad shape — and in that were his original
geologic survey records with the altitude readings, his signature,
and date, time of day — all such stuff. And then some other
climbers left some notes after that. I replaced those with the
new Sierra Club register, which was a brass tube with a sealed
wing lock cap on it. In the scroll was the name of who placed it
there, the date, the time, notes of any predecessors, etc., and
then people sign it to record their climbs. I guess that's still
up there, although I suppose vandals might have taken it!
The register really has value only on a very remote,
difficult mountain. I imagine Mount Clark has been climbed
hundreds of times. But at that time, in the 1920s, relatively
few people had made the ascent.
The idea of true wilderness today is inconceivable. When
you were out there in the earlier days, you were completely out
of touch. Now you have search planes, radios, and helicopters.
Teiser: Those records were never returned?
Adams: No. Somebody who knew something about them took them, I'm sure.
I recognized how valuable they were; valuable in a mountaineering-
historical sense.
Then Hall McAllister gave the cableway on Half Dome. The
cableway was two posts set in the rock about every fifteen feet
with steel cables threaded through them. You just walked up
between the cables. I attached the Crosby clamps to the first
cables.
Photography Workshops and Aspiring Amateurs
Teiser: We wanted to ask you to discuss your workshops.
Adams: One of the most important things about a workshop, apart from its
location, is the fact that in my philosophy it is directed to the
individual photographer maintaining his individuality. Trying to
find out what he has to say about what he sees, so that he is not
dominated by any school or any instructor or any philosophy.
I think I described to you that in studying music, all my
really effective teachers never played a note for me. And there
was only this one teacher in Berkeley who taught with two pianos,
247
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
and by illustrating phrases and saying, "No, it's this way," and
me echoing her. In a few weeks my father recognized the difference,
He said, "It doesn't sound like you." Now, that was a great
revelation. You suddenly realize that you must build something of
yourself. Then you can resist somebody coming along and saying,
"Now, this is the way you do it." Technically it may be another
thing; you may have to say: this is the way you expose and
develop to get a certain result. But the result is yours .
When it comes to saying, "You have to make a photograph with
this feeling," or we have to phrase something in music with a
particular style, that can be quite disastrous unless a person is
a strong individualist. And part of the success of the whole
"group" piano teachers, music teachers, was really developing
people on an imitative basis. I suppose they were honest about
it, with the hope that they'd develop the individuality later.
But there's something about the individual's development of style
and phrasing and touch that's so precious. You just can't
dominate it, you see. So I was extremely fortunate in the
opportunity to be myself.
And that's why I want to impart that same concept in
photography. I want to give students a basic technique which will
liberate them to the utmost degree to get what they "see," and get
what they want . What they see and what they want to photograph
and what they want the photograph to look like — that's their
business. But knowing something of the scientific, practical,
technically oriented approach will enhance their capacity to
understand and express themselves.
It must be difficult, when a group of students comes in, like the
other Sunday, and you really didn't know them.
Well, they were pretty bad. That was a very weak group.
But you didn't even know if the one who had what he presented as
beautiful sunsets really liked to photograph those. His
objectives had not narrowed down; you couldn't even perceive what
he was trying to do.
You can't do that. You either have to say, "I'm a psychiatrist,
and you'll come to my couch for so many dollars an hour over a
period of six months," or you admit, frankly, just an intuitive
reaction. And I usually tell them that.
I had a man here the other day who was an engineer and wanted
to get into photography. And, oh boy, he'd really worked out a
lot of good mechanics. But he absolutely didn't have any "eye."
All I could do was to say, "Look, you're seeing all this stuff.
248
Adams :
Teiser
Adams:
It's like carrying rocks in a knapsack. You don't have to."
There was all this dead space. Then you bring the "L" cards in
and you show him how, when you bring a piece of grass in the
image up to the edge, the grass suddenly becomes significant in
relation to the whole thing. He says, "I never saw that. I
never thought of that." I say, "You have to look for it. I mean,
that's part of seeing and feeling." It's a very subtle and very
complicated thing!
Do you sometimes discourage people who you think really would be
hopeless?
Oh yes. I don't try to tell them they're no good and bums and
everything. Well, I just say to them, "You have a long ways to
go. And you haven't got your techniques, and you're really not
expressing anything. And you just better either get off the dime
and do something — " Sometimes it's that. But most of the time
it's some very gifted person who thinks he wants to go into
photography, and then you try to pick out for him all of the
pitfalls of the so-called professional world.
You may work five days a week in a professional studio and
get fed up with the most commonplace, dull assignments. At the
end of that week, believe me, you'd rather go bowling than work
further with the camera. You'd be tired. Whereas, if you're a
lawyer or an engineer or a bootblack or anything, you build up
this creative tension. Many of the great photographers in the
world have been amateurs.
I try to point out how difficult it is to break into
photography. "Well," they say, "but you sell prints."
"Yes," I say, "I've been doing it for forty years."
There.'s a little difference. I mean, I sell a great many
prints. But twenty-five years ago I didn't sell a great many
prints. I was scratching pretty hard. I say, "You just can't
go out and sell prints. You could get an agent. You could get
a publicity man. You might suddenly emerge as a shooting star
and it would be wonderful, but the chances are against that."
But the people that you see that you instinctively know have
absolutely no taste, no knowledge, no perception, sensitivity —
they might be fine people and really good in many other ways, but
not in photography.
Just like music. You've heard people play the piano and
you wish to gosh they'd go and start fishing or something. Yet
they may be playing accurately, but their whole tone construction,
their whole pattern of phrasing and shaping, is all off, and it's
an agonizing thing to hear. [Interruption]
249
Joseph N. LeConte in the Sierra
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Up in Yosemite in the earlier days, I was not conscious of being
a photographer at all. I was just making photographs. But the
difference between someone like LeConte and myself was that I was
expressing my feelings. And while he had very intense feelings
about the mountains — he really loved them — he was content to
express the factual, scientific, topographic features. I mean,
as a scientist. These things are fully documented in his
photographs.
But photography, being a language, admits poetry. Th
no good grounds of comparison there; both are separate and
important .
There's
There were two or three years when you went on trips with the
LeConte family; was he an accomplished mountaineer?
Oh yes, in relation to the period. He was a climber, but he
never took chances. He wasn't a rock climber. They didn't
exist then.
We made many ascents. We climbed the Agassiz Needle, we
climbed the Goat Mountain — lots of peaks that are commonplace
climbing now, but we did them with excitement then. He was the
one that explored the Kings River Sierra. It seemed that quite
a number of years ago, the State employed a topographer — I forget
what you'd call them — a cartographer — a surveyor, I guess, to
prepare a map of the southern Sierra Nevada. It was about 1880,
I think. And this man got to the top of the Granite Divide and
took one look north into the middle fork of the Kings and beyond,
and just started sketching in. And the maps were quite wrong.
The sheepherders and the cattlemen knew this didn't jibe with
anything they had experienced .
So, LeConte and his friends who loved mountains went up and
down what is now the John Muir Trail I don't know how many times.
And they had to haul animals over cliffs with block and tackle.
People like the Duncan McDuffies, the Charlie Nobles (the
mathematics professor) — really a very elite group of people.
Theodore Solomons was sort of a "parallel" figure, but not one
of the group.
So LeConte decided he was really going to map this region
properly. And of course, being a scientist-surveyor, he had all
the techniques. So he produced the first functioning maps, which
were not really accurate, as he said — they might be off a half a
mile. But at least we know the North Fork of the Kings exists,
250
Adams: and we know that the Middle Fork of the Kings goes all the way
up LeConte Canyon to Mount Goddard, and Goddard Creek doesn't
flow north and so on. All kinds of terrible mistakes were made
on those earlier maps.
So he drew up the whole complex of the Kings-Kern region,
triangulated it, and did what remains an extremely creditable job,
although with no presumption of being really accurate, because he
didn't have the equipment. But he was within, I would say, half
a mile; that's what people who know told me. His maps were very
rewarding and useful.
I don't think his wife, Helen Gompertz, went on too many of
those big trips. I think they were married after most of them.
But they went to Yosemite. And of course the senior LeConte
[Joseph LeConte] was with them in 1901, and he died there. The
LeConte Memorial is dedicated to him.
And then later on, in the late twenties and early thirties,
Mrs. [Joseph N.] LeConte wasn't very well, and they would go to
Porcupine Flat. It was a place near the Tioga Road, a very
delightful campsite, and she'd rest. I remember in 1923 they
were at Porcupine Flat, because that's the time of the big
Berkeley fire. And I received word of this fire and went to
Porcupine Flat to let the LeContes know that the house had been
saved but the roof was slightly damaged.
I left the Memorial in Yosemite. In those days, for hikers
everything was "shortcuts." I remember climbing right out of
Indian Canyon and making a bee-line to Porcupine Flat. I was
wearing a straw hat, and I had gone through brush and forest —
not paying any attention to the trail. This was almost a straight
line. And when I arrived at the camp I had a baby robin in the
top of my straw hat I I think a few of the people thought I was
nuts and that I had done this on purpose, but I was the most
surprised person of all. [Laughter] Mrs. LeConte nourished this
bird for two or three weeks, and finally it flew off.* I'd gone
through a tree, you see, and knocked the bird out of its nest.
I told them about the fire, and that it was nothing to
worry about, but they should know about it. But it was something
to worry about. So they debated whether they should go home, and
I said, "Well, I didn't think so. The information was that the
house was all right. The roof had been burned a little and singed-
no damage."
*For another version of this story, see Helen M. LeConte,
Reminiscences , op. cit . , p. 69.
251
Adams: They gave me a message to telephone to somebody to go and look
at it. This was the house on Hillside Court in Berkeley. So I
stayed with them a day or so. They used to climb Mount Hoffman,
climb out on the top of Mount Watkins and look down on Yosemite.
It was a kind of an intimate life. They'd always give me a
little libation before dinner. Really, they were delightfully
drinking people. Never too much.
Teiser: This was during Prohibition —
Adams: Oh yes —
Teiser: Did they make their own wine?
Adams: Oh no, they just had bottles of booze, like everybody else did.
(The whole thing was a farce.) It was usually bourbon. And we'd
all get together before the campfire in the evening, before
dinner, and they'd give these toasts — these little Scotch or
Southern toasts. You know, like, "Here's tae [sic] us. Wha's
like us? Dahmn few. Thank God." (I can't pronounce it.) These
toasts would go back and forth. [Laughter] And the other one is,
"I lifts my glass. I has your eye. I winks accordin'. I likewise
bows." [Laughter]
And they'd always have this ceremony. And they'd have guests
all the time, and they'd have these wonderful campfire dinners to
gether. It was a really great experience!
And Joe always had the camera and was always making records .
And of course he just exposed and developed empirically. You do
the best you can under the circumstances. I later made albums
of prints for the Sierra Club of his Hetch-Hetchy pictures, and
while they don't say much emotionally, they are simply an
amazing survey of this country in the 1890s and early 1900s.
And now that there's seventy years in perspective, this documenta
tion becomes terribly important, you see. The forest people can
look at them and see the disposition of trees and meadows in
early days.
You see, very few people realize that Yosemite meadows are
not natural grass; they imported grass for cattle feed. Because
when people like the [John] Degnans were there in the seventies
or eighties, I think — Virginia can check the date — they raised
cattle for their milk. And they imported this very special grass.
It was ordinary feed grass, but the grass you see in the meadows
now has nothing to do with what was there first. The Kings
Canyon has bunch grass, which is a quite different thing and very
nourishing for donkeys, but it's not good for cows.
252
Adams: Well, to get back to Yosemite — the awful condition of the
concessions that were there — there were always conflicts. The Camp
Curry people and the Desmond Park [Service] Company and somebody
else's hotel and [A.C.] Pillsbury's studio and [David J.] Foley's
studio and [Julius] Boysen's studio and Best's studio. Everybody
just scratching for a living, you know. [Interruption]
Some of the early Yosemite people were remarkable. [Gabriel]
Sovulewski; you met Grace Ewing [Mrs. Frank B. Ewing], his daughter.
He was a man who was very prominent in the building of the trails.
He did very fine trail engineering, because some of the routing and
structure of those trails today are perfect. Some have just been
straightened.
The Half Dome Cable
Adams: McAllister gave the cable up Half Dome, and asked me if I would put
on the Crosby clamps. Now, a Crosby clamp is a U-shaped device which
secures the cable from slipping through the post rings. Well, they
weigh about five pounds apiece.
So the government brought in at least two mule-loads of Crosby
clamps and dumped them at the spring at the base of Half Dome,
about a half a mile away, and left me a couple of monkey wrenches
and a safety belt and said, "Good luck to you." [Laughter]
Well, you know, I had no idea of the weight. Here I have this
pile of metal, and I have to think, "Do I start the clamps at the
top or bottom?" Well, I started them at the top, logically, because
we have to "break in" on a job like this. So I took about ten
clamps — fifty or sixty pounds in my knapsack — and went up these
cables, which weren't really rightly set. I first had to climb up
to what they call the "neck" of the "Elephant," several hundred feet
of trail to the base of the Dome. Then I had to go up the seven
hundred feet to the top and attach the clamps as I came down. Let's
see, there 'd be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten — there 'd be five pairs of posts, and I could do them in one trip.
And I had to work at 45°, but I had a belt. They were very thoughtful
for that, but the hook was wrong. If I had fallen, it might have
pulled off. But I was supposed to clamp that into the post while I
set these clamps on and put the bolts together.
Let's see. That took me six days of dawn-to-dusk work. And
finally I got all the clamps on. I did this in the last part of
April and early May. So it served its purpose all summer. But
they had to be taken down every winter. They left the cables on
the Dome. If the posts were strong enough and were shaped a different
way, I think they could have left them up without damage from snow.
But I'm not an engineer, so I don't know.
253
Adams: Hence I have been up Half Dome probably more than anybody I can
think of. [Laughter]
In the first days, [George C.] Anderson climbed Half Dome
drilling holes in the rock and inserting little expansion bolts.
And the rope laid right on the surface of the Dome. It was quite a
hazardous climb because the Dome was an exfoliated mass. Contrary
to Muir, the glaciers never came to within seven hundred feet of the
top of it. But these great plates of granite overlap on the down
ward side, so you come across about a two-foot height of granite
ledge. Well, when you're climbing at 45° a two-foot step or a thirty-
inch step is really a pretty hazardous obstruction, especially when
you're going down. So today we can climb the Dome safely, but a lot
of climbers ascend the Dome outside the cable but only with ropes
and the most careful "friction" climbing.
But now they have cables with smaller clamps and a little
different system. They still take them down. But it wasn't the
cumbersome thing I had to work with.
But that was an interesting experience. There was a sleet
storm once, when everything was covered with ice. I didn't have any
gloves and, oh gosh, it was terrible. [Laughs] Especially me, as a
pianist, getting my fingers frozen.
So, that was a very nice experience.
When the LeContes were in Yosemite, we explored the Quarter
Domes which are in between Half Dome and Clouds Rest — actually
between Half Dome and the Pinnacles. And on one of the Quarter
Domes is an enormous erratic boulder, one of the best examples I
know of. I have a picture somewhere of Joe LeConte standing by this
boulder. LeConte was a tiny man (he was about five feet one) and
this boulder looks gigantic. We agreed that he should always be
around to be photographed in scenes of nature, because he made
nature look so much bigger. [Laughter]
Then I met Virginia. I used to go down to Best's studio, and
Harry Best had an old Chickering square. And I used to practice.
And of course the inevitable happened, but it was a very long
engagement. She had tremendous patience.
I would walk down from LeConte Memorial; it was about a mile.
Didn't think anything at all of the fact that we had no car. I did
have a car, a little old Ford laundry wagon. But I didn't have any
lights, so at night I had to walk down to the studio and practice
two or three hours .
Teiser: You were practicing and taking care of the lodge and photographing
all the time?
254
Adams: Oh yes. You see, I also was studying harmony and musicology that I
had to work on. So I was pretty busy.
Teiser: You certainly were.
Adams: On a nonacademic basis, but still...
Logic and Faith
Teiser: I'm amazed that you were such a responsible young man. You
apparently did everything you said you were going to do.
Adams: Yes, I did — tried, at least. I guess I was pretty good. My father
was a pretty good logician. I mean, he would say: if you have to
do it, you do it, and do it the best you can. That's all there is
to it. But I also was required to do a lot of literary work. And
a lot of writing.
Teiser: I wonder if your first published piece isn't a report in the Sierra
Club Bulletin of 1921, as custodian of the LeConte Lodge. It was
a report for 1920.
Adams: Yes, it probably is.
Teiser: About needed repairs. A short report.
Adams: Yes. I have completely forgotten it, but that probably would be it.
I think I told you the experience when I was studying Greek with
old Dr. Harriot in San Francisco. Did I tell you that? Was that on
the tape?
Teiser: Yes.
Adams: Yes. Dr. Harriot was a fundamentalist. He was a Canadian. He was
apparently a very fine Greek scholar — there was no question about
that. He really was an awfully good teacher, I must say that for
him. I read quite a little of the classic Greek and got a lot out
of it.
But he asked me one time, he asked, "What are you doing? What
are you reading? Do you go to church?" I said, "No."
"Oh, my God. You don't go to church!" I don't think he said
"my God," but he indicated it was terrible.
He asked, "What's your religion?" I said, "I guess it's
Episcopalian. I don't know."
255
Adams :
Teiser
Adams:
Well, that goggle-eyed him. And then he asked, "What are you
reading?" I said, "Poets. Of course I like the Romantic poets,"
and included Shelley.
"Oh, Shelley! Evil!" He blew his top. Dr. Harriot said,
"I suppose, young man, that you are one of those believers in
Darwin."
I said, "Yes, it makes a lot of sense."
He said, "Well, evolution is a very false thing, as the
Scriptures clearly show you. It's a matter of devolution."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Well, the world was created by God in 4004 B.C. And
we know that. That's been proven by — " (I forget the name,)* And he
said, "Ever since then, man has been de-volving instead of evolving,
and will until the Second Coming will come and will clear it all
up,
Those were about the exact words.
I said, "Well, Dr. Harriot, how do you account for the fossils
in the rocks? I mean, geological history — "
"Oh," he said, "that's a lot of nonsense. My dear young man,
God put the fossils in the rocks to tempt our faith." [Laughter]
Well, that got my innate scientific mind, or tendency, really
mad! I remember telling my father about it.
"Well," he said, "if Dr. Harriot can multiply a time factor by
maybe a million. The fossils, you know, are there like we are, and
tempting what fate?" He couldn't quite blast the old man — Papa was
very kind. But looking back at it, it's absolutely curious that
people have that degree of logic in modern times!
This image I had of God was of a bearded man in a white robe
with a knapsack full of fossils, poking them in the rocks to tempt
the faith of some serfs that would follow. So I think from that
time on I was really soured on conventional religion, because
felt it was pretty bad and weak.
Well, you were ready to be a pantheist, I suppose.
Yes, I guess I was, but I never got to the point of the pathetic
fallacy. And that's interesting that I didn't, because I very
easily could have. And a lot of people today, in this super-
conservation time, with movements and ideologies, approach pantheism
more than I ever did. That is, imputing individualistic qualities
to natural things. Who called it the pathetic fallacy? I can't
remember the — wasn't it Wordsworth?
*Bishop Ussher.
256
Teiser: It may have been Wordsworth.
Adams: Wordsworth was kind of a highly expressive John Muir. Well, I'll
try to find out, because it really is an important element of
philosophy.
Teiser: Well, maybe it was Ruskin.
Adams: I think maybe you're right. I think maybe it ±s^ Ruskin. Let's
look it up. [It was!] It means we attribute human qualities to the
inanimate or to the nonhuman.
Of course, remember, being born in San Francisco, being part of
the Golden Gate and the West and the Sierra Nevada, I have a
totally different concept of the world from the people born in the
Midwest and the East.
Although the early paintings of the Hudson River School are
really quite remarkable. There are some beautiful places, but
they're all on relatively small scale. You never have this over
powering impact of the West — but you have more thunderstorms, which
make up for it!
Panchromatic Plates
Teiser: Were you aware of Carle ton E. Watkins's photographs?
Adams: No. I'm very glad you brought that up, because I didn't know about
Watkins for decades. I saw a lot of old photographs and they didn't
mean anything to me. I'd see some and I'd say, "Oh, they're terrible.'
The only thrill I got in that domain was when I went in to see old
A.C. Pillsbury — and he was a rather remarkable man. He did the
first time-lapse movies of flowers opening. Great man. He'd
received some Wrattan & Wainright glass plates from England. And
they were panchromatic, and he used a red filter, and he showed these
pictures, and you never saw such glorious clouds and dark skies, and
oh gosh, it was just something!
Well then, the story should revert a little to a bit of
photographic history which is not very much known. George Eastman
had a terrific industry by the tail, and realizing that this thing
was just getting beyond him and beyond anybody on his staff, and
knowing that he had to have photo-scientists, he 'd heard that Dr.
C.E.K. Mees was the really top photographic scientist going. There
was somebody in Germany, but George didn't like the Germans, and he
went to England. And he saw Mees and said, "I want you to work for
257
Adams: me." He offered him a salary — very much more than Mees could even
dream of getting in England, and Mees said, "I'm under contract to
Wrattan & Wainright for ten years; I can't accept it." What did
Eastman do? He bought out Wrattan & Wainright [laughter] — to get
Mees.
So that was why you had for a while Kodak-Wrattan plates. My
"Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" is made on one, incidentally. And
the Wrattan filters, which still persist today are the world standard
of color filters. They're now all in gelatins, but they can be made
up in glass.
Mees was imported to Kodak in Rochester and became the
director of research. And Eastman was a very strange man — a
bachelor — had a great Momma complex. He was not a very easily
understood person, but completely honorable. Many great stories
were told me by Mees. I used to see Mees often after he'd retired
to Honolulu. I'd go to his home every other day or so while I was
there, and we'd sit down and have a drink by the sea and talk, and
he'd reminisce. Loved to see me, because it was a way of blowing
off steam. Boy, the stuff I got from him! If I'd had a tape
recorder, it would be invaluable! I mean the early part of Kodak,
and the struggles, and what was quality , and why they didn't take
up the Land projects. You see, Land had an option of a hundred
or two hundred thousand dollars with Kodak to buy his project.
They were just beginning. And "Nobby" [Walter] Clark said, "Oh,
it's just a toy. We can't do it."
Mees said, "I was inclined to favor us getting it, but of
course, we couldn't have brought it out until it had been perfected.
A young company could bring out something that isn't perfect, but an
established company cannot do that."
Well, of course Polaroid is second to Kodak now, thank God
[laughter], for that very reason, and has achieved perfection.
Mees told me this wonderful story of advertising. "I was at
my desk early one morning and a man comes down and gives me a
message. 'Mr. Eastman wishes to see you immediately, without delay.'"
And Mees thought, "What have I done now?" He'd never got a message
like this before! "So I went up to the office." [Imitates Eastman —
hearty tone:] "Come in, Mees. Sit down." And he pulled out an
advertisement that had been in the morning paper: 'Kodak makes the
best lenses in the world.' And he says, "Mees, is that true?" And
Mees said (he had a couple of fast thoughts, you see), "Well, I'm a
scientist. I can't do any sales or advertising." He said, "No,
Mr. Eastman. It isn't true. The Dahlmeyer, Zeiss, and Cooke and a
few others make, really, better lenses than we do." [Imitating
Eastman:] "That's what I thought. I know we're trying. Thank you
very much."
258
Adams: From that time on, every advertisement that came over the desk of
George Eastman had to be checked by Mees and one or another person
for accuracy and honesty.
And that's one of the best things I heard about Eastman. He
was that kind of a person.
I must say that of all the material I use, Eastman Kodak's the
most consistent. They're the least imaginative company, the least
innovative in one sense — the aesthetic sense. But they're really
a pretty fantastic outfit.
Teiser: You said that Pillsbury showed you a Wrattan & Wainright plate?
Adams: Yes. Wrattan and Wainright were the big English firm that made
plates and filters, maybe papers.
Teiser: Were they new?
Adams: Oh yes. He got some of the first ones. And then I got a box when
they came on the market. I got two boxes, in fact. I guess I had
three, all together. And that's what I did the Monolith and other
early pictures with. Then Kodak made them, and they were called
Wrattan plates.
Teiser: Were they very much better than the material you'd been getting?
Adams: Well, there was nothing like them that I knew of. They were the
first panchromatic emulsions of any consequence.
Then of course they moved on to panchromatic film — which is
today the principal emulsion. Basically, a photographic emulsion
is only sensitive to blue light. Plain silver halides react only
to blue light. Now you bring in a dye which is sensitive to or
absorbs the energy of green light and transfers that energy, as
quantum energy, to the silver. That means the emulsion is sensitive
to green as well as blue. Then you bring in the dyes that absorb
red and green light, and you have panchromatic emulsion.
They had three types of panchromatic — A, B, and C. A is only
partially panchromatic. A is red-sensitive, but of rather low
green sensitivity. Type B, which is the standard film we have today,
still has a deficiency in the green. The green part of the spectrum
is that area of the spectrum to which the eye responds most. In
other words, anything that is green comes through with a higher
energy to the eye. So if I see a green fabric or a green tree and
I say I want to place that on, say, Zone V of the scale, I really
have to place it on VI to get the "visual" effect. That fools a
lot of people. That's why you see so many black trees in mountain
pictures. They are of low color saturation to begin with, and
panchromatic film does further lower the green values.
259
Adams: The Panchromatic C was super red-sensitive, and therefore it was
very fast with tungsten light. (Tungsten light has a greater
proportion of red light to it than daylight.) One effect was that
it produced white lips . They had to develop two correcting green
filters to take care of the type C.
All these things are simple to understand, but very few people
know about them at all!
Verichrome pan is a film which is more sensitive to green than
the ordinary pan. Therefore, it is recommended for a lot of
landscape work. But it never caught on, because people liked to use
strong filters and get black skies, whereas in the daguerreotype
and wet plate days, you'd only get white skies. You could only use
blue light.
I would say you got a greater 'stylization of values in the
early days with emulsions sensitive to blue light only than you do
now with panchromatic materials. I can duplicate that effect by
using a strong blue filter; it cuts out all the other light.
We have a series of filters that partially withhold light of
various colors . And you have filters which are called tri-color —
say, the blue, green, and red, which transmit the respective colors.
Then you have the "minus" filters, which are very interesting, such
as the minus blue (number twelve) and the minus red and minus green.
Teiser: Does "minus blue" mean it doesn't let any blue through?
Adams: Yes, it completely cuts out the blue. There's more than a hundred
Wrattan filters. All of these are tools which the photographer can
use.
Teiser: This photograph, "Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake," I wonder
what film you used for it. This is the one that's variously dated
1923 and 1927.
Adams: That's glass plate. That's the same as the Half Dome. I think it
was made in 1923 on that trip with Harold Saville. And it was made
on a Wrattan plate.
Teiser: Is that why you were able to get such splendid sky?
Adams: Oh yes. Ordinary orthochromatic (green-sensitive) plates couldn't
do that. The sky — you'd get the clouds and you'd get the clarity,
but you wouldn't get that level of richness. Strange things happen
when the sky drops in value below the clouds (because, you see, the
sky, say at that angle, would be around four hundred candles per
square foot, between three and four hundred), and the clouds would be
around eight hundred and a thousand. You'd have only a one to two or
a one to three ratio. And that isn't enough to be dramatic.
260
Adams: Now, with orthochromatic film, you could lower the sky value a lot.
I mean, I get a K2 or G filter. But you couldn't lower the sky
value as much as you could with a panchromatic plate or film. And
that's why in the early days using blue-sensitive plates you couldn't
photograph clouds, because the blue sky had the same photometric
value as the clouds. So they made separate negatives of clouds.
When they brought it down on the scale, giving one-eighth or
one-sixteenth the exposure, the clouds were obviously much brighter
than the sky. Then they'd use those cloud negatives and print them
in. Sometimes they'd get them upside down. [Laughter] Sometimes
they got them with light on the cloud from the right side and the
light on the mountain from the left. [More laughter] I'm telling
you!
One of the funniest ones was years ago. The prize-winning
picture of the Royal Photographic Society in London. It was a
picture of the Parthenon, and it was in beautiful late evening light.
The white columns glowed in the late sun. And behind was a thunder
cloud, you see. A very beautiful picture. Boy, that's something!
Then you look at the light on the columns, which is coming from
this side, and the light on the clouds, which is coming from that
side. [Laughter]
And I have a picture of Half Dome and the moon which is an
unintentional phony. This picture of the Dome was taken about two
in the afternoon. And I just kept the camera in the same place,
and the moon came up after the sun had completely gone. Here's the
full moon in the sky — the moon and Half Dome. It's a real moon —
not "printed in." I show that to people and I say, "What's wrong
with this picture?" They can't figure it out.
V. Adams: The moon would never be that high when the sun is still up?
Adams: If you had a perfect full moon there wouldn't be any sun. Because,
it's always at the same angle — opposite the sun. And you only get
the full moon when the sun is directly opposite and below the
horizon. So here's a full moon in the sky, and the sun was clearly
high, which is an absolute impossibility.
V. Adams: I think you took it at four in the afternoon.
Adams: Four, it might have been. Well, now the good one, the vertical one
(taken with the Hasselblad) , the one I use all the time, that's a
real moon in real time! That's about a little over three-quarters.
That's taken about three-thirty or four — maybe by daylight savings
time, five. And the shadows are falling on the Dome. But the moon
is in the right phase for that position of the sun.
Teiser: It's on the cover of this last Infinity, May 1972.
261
Adams: Yes. Also a special edition print which you've seen around a lot.
It's a very impressive picture. It's absolutely real. There's
nothing wrong there. That's the moon and the Dome, and they are
taken together. But you just can't bring the moon up into the
wrong phase, you see. Because anybody who knows the disposition
of the heavenly bodies is going to immediately blow .their top.
[Laughs ]
[End Tape 10, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 10, Side 2]
Dreams and Heavenly Bodies
— ~~- ~ •
Adams: As you know, I'm scientifically inclined, and I am not a professional
mystic. I cannot categorically deny such things as ESP or thought
transference, because I think those are domains we know nothing
about. But I can record for you an experience that when I was a
young boy in San Francisco, before I ever went to Yosemite, I had
an extremely vivid dream of waking up in a big building on a cot.
I can still remember the discomfort of the cot. And I looked up
to my right and here was a multipaned window — whatever you call
these window panes — and the moonlight was coming through, and it
gave me the feeling of being in some kind of a stone-cast building.
The dream was so extremely vivid that I've never forgotten it. And
I've been very sure now to remember that it happened long before I
went to Yosemite.
And in 1919 I was sleeping in the LeConte Memorial on a cot,
and I woke up and here was the same window, the same moon, the same
mood — the stone building — the complete reconstruction, if you want
to say it, of this dream, which had made such an impression that I
couldn't forget it. And the effect on me was of course a little
bit shattering. I remember getting up and turning on the lights
and dressing and sitting and wondering what it was all about.
Because this was a complete, detailed duplication of the dream.
Whether that is total coincidence or whether it's something
else, I don't know, but it's something that's very important. And
I just record it with the assumption that it is coincidence and
probably emotionally exaggerated and so on. But it is something
that for me was a real occurrence.
And of course I do have these dreams recurrently, every six
months or so, of getting in a taxi and driving to a music hall or an
opera house or a symphony hall, and seeing great placards screaming
that Ansel Adams is going to play the Brahms Second Concerto with
262
Adams: the Boston Symphony. It's all very real. I'm in a terrible state
because I don't know the Brahms Second Concerto at all. But I
nevertheless am disgorged at the stage entrance and go in. All the
musicians are there backstage, tuning up and talking, and the
conductor comes forward and says, "I'm so glad to see you. Our
rehearsal was encouraging." And I sit there, and a slight feeling
of perspiration — "What am I doing here?" I take a glimpse, and the
hall is completely packed with hundreds or thousands of people.
Finally the conductor invites the orchestra to go out on the stage,
and they go out and take their places. And I'm supposed to lead,
so I walk out and the conductor follows me, and I get as far as the
piano. And the conductor bows and we all bow, and he steps to the
podium.
And at that time I wake up from the situation with the screaming
heeby-jeebies because I don't know the work, I don't know anything
about it, even the first notes.' I'm absolutely incapable of doing
it.
I've sometimes gotten further when it's been really a very
traumatic business. And sometimes I just barely get out to the
piano. But with the idea of not knowing anything about the music
but being fully billed for it, advertised, announced. It is a scary
situation. The orchestra's good. And in some strange way, I have
had a rehearsal of which I remember nothing. And I keep getting
this dream over and over again. I must have had it a dozen times.
It's a very interesting frustration dream. I've had the same
thing in climbing — of climbing on an icy mountain; everything is
fine — and then I find myself stuck, and I don't know where to go.
I suppose that's motivated a little bit by Muir's description of
Mount Ritter, where he was spread-eagled on the cliff and couldn't
see up or down or sideways. Of course, he never should have been
there anyway. (I never should have been in many of the places I
was really in.) But the instinct takes over and he leaps and grabs
a ledge and gets out of his predicament.
Well, I have these dreams — getting into absolutely insoluble
problems — and then I wake up. Sometimes you wake up with a sense
of relief, and sometimes you wake up, really, with just shock.
Teiser: Ever dream photographs?
Adams: Yes. And I also dream in color, which is very interesting. I'm
very conscious of color.
Teiser: There are few people, I think, who do.
Adams: Yes, I think so. I do dream in color. Things are seen in colors.
So I can say that , truthfully .
263
Adams: But this other one is such an interesting experience — in Yosemite
in the LeConte Memorial. My father always recounted of having a
dream — he's sleeping out somewhere and he sees a star, and the star
begins to move toward him and becomes brighter and brighter and
brighter. And finally he wakes up.
And I had one experience — I was up, I guess, way up in
Tuolumne Meadow somewhere, where I saw a meteorite coming directly
at me, the first time I've ever seen that. The angle of approach
of the meteorite was right directly toward me, so that the object
became brighter and brighter and brighter and suddenly extinguished.
It was quite an experience. And of course I thought of my father's
dream. He might have seen something.
And then lately, in late years, we've gone to the high country,
and we see satellites. I remember seeing the first Sputnik from the
top of the Polaroid building in Boston. It was going south across
the sky. And many scientists were up there, and they were looking
at this with extraordinary interest! Some of us were just thinking,
"What a wonderful thing," and others were very glum: "They got
there first," they said. This little thing was traveling fast, and
it took quite a time to get down to the horizon. It had a strange,
illusionary flat trajectory, and it suddenly winked out when it got
in the earth's shadow.
I had a very interesting psychological experience in San
Francisco. I walked out of the house one night, going to my
darkroom, which was next door. And I looked up at the sky — just
looked up — a glance. (I always do, for some reason.) And then
after a few seconds I thought, "What is this?" My unconscious said,
"There's something going on." I looked up again and here was a
satellite moving. Now, the interesting thing was that I looked up
just as a glance, and yet my mental computers were able to tell me
that there was something moving among the stars.
The mind is so complex — what goes on is so remarkable — such as
the speed with which things are observed and computed. I just took
a quick glance at the sky, and then it took ten seconds or more for
my mind to tell me that there was something different up there.
Teiser: Your visual computers must be faster than most people's.
Adams: I don't know. They're probably more directed in some ways. They're
probably not any faster.
264
Concepts of Conservation and Wilderness
Teiser: I'll just ask you one question more about Yosemite. Did you think
in the early days, "This is a place to be preserved"?
Adams: Oh yes. But it was vaguely formed in my mind at that time. The
question of preservation — the whole conservation picture was
confused in the early days. It still is!! The Sierra Club, with
their outings, was trying to get people into the mountains to see
them so that they would support legislation for their protection.
I used to get a more interesting reaction going to Forest Service
country, like the mining country at the Minarets, because of the
evidence of human content. I think we always felt the wilderness
had to be preserved, but we had a very hazy idea what preservation
really meant. And we thought nothing of putting our donkey in a
meadow to pasture, and nothing of having camped at a riverbank.
Mr. Holman had some pretty advanced ideas. And in fact, he was
the one who promoted the idea of fire being an important element in
continuing the character of the forest. Then later on, people came
and talked about the fact that wilderness is an illusion — "What do
you call wilderness?" If nobody 'd been there ever, maybe that's
wilderness. But Yosemite was populated first with Indians, then
with sheepherders and cattle people. So, I always say wilderness is
a mystique. It's a state of mind, which we enjoy, in its so-called
pristine quality, because we have our wonderful equipment — the best
boots in the world, the best clothing, condensed food — all kinds of
things. It's like a man going to the moon and being completely
equipped with life-supporting units. We do the same thing in a way
in the wilderness.
I think if people in the club today went out and lived the way
Mr. Holman and I did in the twenties, they couldn't take it. We had
mush, bacon, egg powder, flour, salt, some pepper, beans, period.
You know, all cooked up over an open fire in tin cans. And my
digestion could take it! I used to eat the most colossal quantities
of mush, my God! Quarts! Just couldn't fill up. Weighed 120.
[Laughter]
Teiser: Any corn meal?
Adams: Well, sometimes corn meal, but that had its difficulties. We
usually had oats — Quaker oats — and that was before the quick cooking
kind too, and at a high altitutde you have to cook and cook. Oh,
we had some rice; then we had tomato sauce. We had a lot of simple
things — and we had honey. And then of course there was the eternal
biscuit and flapjack situation. The diet was very monotonous.
265
Yosemite Concessions
Adams: I think — well, there's so much more to say there. I think the
conflict of the early concessions in Yosemite is important. They
were all bad. Nobody had any feeling for the place at all. Well,
I think Virginia had a real reaction. Grace Ewing had. But people
who came in the main were a very low order of people as a rule. The
whole place was a big curio, and people as well as the operators had
no understanding and no respect. They sold these horrible curios
and pandered to the worst possible level of taste you can imagine.
A lot of the people got together and petitioned the government to
build a road up by Vernal and Nevada Falls so the public could "see"
it. Well, naturally it would ruin the place! I remember arguing
that; they laughed me down. "Well, if you had to do business here,
you'd want more people, wouldn't you?" Which is unfortunately the
concessioner's idea. Not really in Yosemite now.
But after the formation of the big company [Yosemite Park and
Curry Company] they've always given good service.
In many ways, when you compare it to all the other parks, there's
nothing anywhere as good. After all, you ask somebody to come in and
run a business — accommodations and food — and hopefully make a little
profit; it can't be done on an entirely idealistic basis. You have
to have all kinds of little things to sell and "entertainment" to
offer.
Teiser: Should the government be running the concessions?
Adams: The government should own all the plants and lease the operations.
But you see, when [Stephen T. ] Mather took over the directorship of
the Park Service under President Wilson — remember, it was a
Democratic administration, and Mather was a very prominent Republican
businessman (head of the Borax Company of America) but very
idealistic. He felt that everything could be operated on Republican
principles, and that private business should be invited into the park
to operate under government supervision. But there wasn't any
subsidy — it was just taken for granted that it would be automatically
profit-making. But what happened was that people did invest money,
but they didn't earn anything. In other words, they had no property;
they just had leases for the land. You could build a building on it,
but it belonged to the government. You have only a sort of prior
right to it, and you have to maintain it. The whole thing is subject
to review now, and it's a very important thing. The government should
take over the capital investment, and then lease operation on a
percentage basis under the most strict controls. But who's going to
define the "strict control"? Who's going to write the taste pattern?
That's a terribly difficult thing.
266
Adams: So we have the eternal flux of enterprise, idealism, profit, loss,
and tolerance. [Laughter]
Well, I'll see you again next weekend?
[End Tape 10, Side 2]
Sierra Club Photographers
[Interview IX — 2 June 1972]
[Begin Tape 11, Side 1]
Teiser: In 1923 you made an album of forty-five exhibit photographs for the
Sierra Club. What were they?
Adams: I went along for several years on the outings as the photographer,
as well as assistant manager, and I made countless pictures which
were available to the members at very low cost. We would get these
random orders one year, and I decided the next year I would take
this number of prints that I thought were good and do it all up as
a portfolio. It was very cheap, and they weren't very good prints.
They were as good as I could make them then. I wasn't planning to
cut corners, but it was just a selection of pictures on the trip; a
group of us got together and picked out which we thought were the
best ones. It was a personal club thing.
It's like, way back in 1925-1926, the LeConte family and I, we
met a big pack train with a lot of rich New York bankers — terribly
important people financially, and they had about six mules per
person. They were so anxious — Herbert Wykoff , a lawyer, had told
them about me, and they ordered several sets of pictures. I
remember, I got the largest fee I ever received from anybody, which
was $750. It probably cost me $710 to do it. [Laughs] These sets
were made for these five men; just a private order.
[Interruption]
Teiser: Were you the first official photographer of the Sierra Club? Did
they make that title up for you?
Adams: Well, that was an "apocryphal" title. There were photographers that
had worked for years with the club. One of them was Rodney Gleason.
Then there was Walter Huber. But I have no idea what their status
was — whether they went along for a free trip, or whether they just
photographed for pleasure. LeConte and Huber and Theodore Solomons,
all those people made photographs on an amateur basis and never made
anything out of it, and that's why I, when I did my set, I did it
practically at cost basis, because it was considered improper to
make money out of the club if you weren't a professional.
267
Adams: Then Cedric Wright followed me in that position. Got the free
outing for being both sanitary engineer and the photographer. He
made some very fine photographs, and he sold them. But at that
time he realized that he was a quasi-professional and could make
something on it.
Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
The John Muir Trail]
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams :
Now, the Sierra Nevada book [Sierra Nevada;
was done in '38, I think. In memory of Peter Starr, his father
[Walter A. Starr] sponsored it.
I see that it was done by the Archetype Press.
Bentley, was it?
That was Wilder
Yes, Wilder Bentley in Berkeley. And the engravings were done by
the Donnelley Company and tipped in. It's a very, very rare book.
We call it the "white elephant." There's some very poor pictures
in it and some of my best. And the reproductions (letterpress) as
a whole are very fine, but the tip- in, especially with calendared
or plated paper, is very bad because the corners break. If you
have a lithograph or a drawing on a sheet of rag paper, you can
bend the corner and it might not break, but the baryta coating on
smooth paper will crack. So there have been terrible disasters
with the book, where they folded the prints over and they have
broken. These reproductions are on a plate paper — very smooth
surface — and varnished.
I was talking the other day about the baryta coat, which is a
white clay filler which gives extremely smooth paper surface and
of course keeps the image away from contact with the paper fibers.
You take one of those engravings and bend it — the paper surface
plus the varnish or lacquer — you would have a break.
Same thing with the Making a Photograph book, which has tipped-
in illustrations, also reproduced by letterpress.
That was printed in large quantities, wasn't it?
Oh yes. It was printed in many editions. But the Sierra Nevada
book was printed in only one edition.
And a small one at that, wasn't it?
Yes. I forget how many.
268
Teiser: Did you initiate the idea, or did Mr. Starr initiate it?
Adams: Mr. Starr said he'd like to do a memorial for his son using
photographs, and asked me what did I have to suggest. So I said,
"Well, why don't we do the John Muir Trail?" (I had photographed
most of the area.) "We can put together something worthwhile."
Teiser: Was his son a mountaineer?
Adams: His son was a mountaineer — a loner, as they call it. He was killed
on the Minarets, climbing all alone, which was a very stupid thing
to do. I think he was psychologically rather strange in that idea
of personal isolation — immolation would be a good word. You can't
climb alone in that kind of crags without some day having something
happen to you. So he was found near the top of one of the Minarets
by Norman Clyde. He was buried there; they just cemented him in on
a ledge. The best thing to do.
Teiser: What a wonderful memorial to him.
Adams: Well, his father was a very prominent man — businessman, connected
with the Sierra Club, of course, intimately — president and so on.
Walter and I had been on trips. He lived to be eighty-seven or
something. A very fine person. Of course, he didn't have any
idea of books, and he was rather appalled at the cost. And I think
we sold the book for fifteen dollars. It says in the colophon in
the back that five hundred copies were printed.
When I have done a book, I can remember nothing about it.
I can't remember the sequence of pictures —
Teiser: Did you work with Wilder Bentley on it?
Adams: Oh yes, we worked very closely on it.
Teiser: What was he like?
Adams: Very fine man, very capable craftsman.
Teiser: There's an acknowledgement in the book. It says, "For permission
to use many of the pictures reproduced in this volume, I am indebted
to Alfred Stieglitz, the Studio Publications, the Sierra Club
Bulletin, Camera Craft magazine, and many other organizations and
individuals." What does that mean?
Adams: The acknowledgements are merely a courtesy to previous use of the
pictures. And it really isn't necessary.
Teiser: They didn't have rights?
269
Adams: They had no legal copyrights. But Stieglitz gave me an exhibit,
and the Sierra Club and these people that had used the pictures —
I just wanted to give them credit. These acknowledgements, which,
as I said, have no legal obligation, as they would if rights had
been secured.
For instance, the pictures in my Portfolios Five and Six are
strictly limited and under the control of the Parasol Press. So
if the Morgans, who are doing my monograph*, want to reproduce one,
they have to get permission of the Parasol Press and pay a use fee.
Otherwise I'd be in difficulty, because I'm never supposed to let
any of those things out. The Parasol Press bought the entire
edition and the rights of use.
The courtesy is sometimes based on economic necessity, but
most times it's based on ethical consideration — these people
encouraged me and showed my work.
Teiser: These photographs in the Sierra Nevada book had been made, then,
over quite a series of years?
Adams: Oh yes.
Teiser: We'd like to have on the record your comments on some of your
photographs, and since these are published, so that people could
see copies of them, could you just look at the book and discuss
them by title?
Adams: Well, the frontispiece, of the mountain climbers, was on the
Minarets, and one of those is Dave Brower.
Teiser: Which one?
Adams: I think it's this one [the one at the top].
Then, the "Yosemite Valley" shows many of the very first
negatives I made with an eight by ten camera. These negatives are
catalogued as I-Y-I et seq. "I" signifies eight by ten, "Y" is
Yosemite, and "I" is the serial number. I forget the dates, but
most were early, as is the "Bridalveil Fall," which is on a glass
plate. And "Half Dome, Yosemite Valley," with a thunder cloud,
is again one of my early good ones. I was always a little worried
about trimming, cropping it, but it has wonderful variation of
"feeling" depending on the cropping.
*Subsequently published.
Morgan & Morgan, 1972)
Ansel Adams (Hastings-on-Hudson, New York:
270
Teiser: Is this cropped to your satisfaction?
Adams: No, not entirely.
Teiser: Are these somewhat reduced from negative size?
Adams: Well, it depends: the largest negative size I use is eight by ten.
Now, "Vogelsang Peak" was made on a five by seven negative in the
late twenties. That's up near Tuolumne Pass.
Teiser: What time of day was that?
Adams: It could be late in the day, very late, perhaps an hour and a
half before sunset. "Mount Lyell," with Lyell Canyon and the
Tuolumne River, that was done early too, and on an eight by ten
negative.
Teiser: By "early" you mean in the twenties?
Adams: Well, around in that area. Maybe early 1930s. The "Grass and
Burned Stump," that's on a four by five. And was done near
Wawona. "Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake" is a 6 1/2 by 8 1/2
glass plate done way back in the twenties.
Teiser: That's what Mrs. Newhall said is your first significant picture?
Adams: Well, I think the "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" was, but
there's some discussion about the dates.
Teiser: Oh, you mean the discussion concerns the dates, not the significance?
Adams: Both! This "Shadow Lake" is one of the best ones. I took many on
that trip, but these were mostly on 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 glass plates,
whereas the other later ones are on eight by ten glass plates and,
of course, four by five film.
Teiser: That was well before your announced rejection of pictorialism, and
yet "Shadow Lake" is not pictorial in any way.
Adams: Yes. The first prints were made on goofy paper, but the negatives
were pretty good. Many were damaged in my Yosemite darkroom fire,
so in order to reproduce them now, we must have the prints
"retouched" by the engraver. This "Shadow Lake, Mount Ritter and
Banner Peak" was done on a five by four film. It's very interesting.
The Graflex people put out a roll film holder in which the image
proportions were full four by five. Now the standard four by five
film is a four by five sheet, but it has a small margin around it —
areas to secure it in the film holder. But these Graflex roll films
actually were full four- by five-inch images, which of course no
four by five enlarger will take. I have to use a bigger enlarger.
271
Adams: "The Pass" was made on 3 1/4- by 4 1/4-inch roll film.
Teiser: What pass is that?
Adams: Well [pause] — that's always a question. It's somewhere in the San
Joaquin Sierra. I've forgotten the name. It's near Isaac Walton
Lake — in that area.
"Upper Iceberg Lake." Well, this is a heavy snow year, you
see. This was five by four. This was taken the same time as the
other lake.
"Michael Minarets" is the same. I think that's the one that
Peter Starr was killed on.
Teiser: Is that in the original proportion? Isn't it narrower than — ?
Adams: Well, I don't follow strictly the film format. Negatives come in
certain sizes, and sometimes you follow them and sometimes you
"crop." And this has always been much better cropped narrower.
There's a lot of "disturbance" on the edge of the negative. So a
narrow crop is indicated.
This is a four by five, "Rock and Water," in the northern part
of Yosemite National Park, in the Virginia Canyon area. It was
done in gray light.
Teiser: These hold their full scale quite well, don't they — these
reproductions?
Adams: Yes, these reproductions are wonderful.
That is the Devil's Post Pile monument, which is east of
Yosemite, on the John Muir Trail.
"Red and White Mountain." We are now getting into the San
Joaquin (South Fork) Sierra. This drains into the Middle Fork.
Bear Creek Spire, Mount Starr (the mountain off Mono Pass).
This is just "Leaves," somewhere in the Sierra.
Teiser: What kind of lighting is that?
Adams: It's gray light. Sky light or late evening or clouds.
"Pilot Knob" — this has another name. It's an erroneous name
and I forget what it is. This is Evolution Creek, all right, but
it's not "Pilot Knob." "Emerald Peak and Cloud Shadows." That's
near Muir Pass.
272
Adams: Then here's "Lake Near Muir Pass." I think it's Wanda Lake. It's
interesting; was done before the time of polarizers. We are
looking down through clear water to submerged rocks. This shows
how pure that water was! It's very clear, and the sky was deep
blue. If there had been clouds in the sky, you would have had a
terrible time with the cloud reflections.
"Black Giant" near Muir Pass is a telephotograph. It is of
black slate which is accentuated by the cloud shadows here.
Then "Flowers and Rock." That's somewhere in the Kings River
Sierra. "Grouse Valley" is in the Middle Fork of the Kings. The
LeContes did a lot of exploration in there.
Teiser: What time of year do you get those big clouds?
Adams: Well, even in summer — July, August.
"Bishop Pass and the Inconsolable Range." That's a spur on
the east side, near Bishop Pass. It's a great thunderstorm area;
it's usually muttering with thunder. "Inconsolable" is a
marvelous name. Theodore Solomons gave many of the names during
his early travels, like Scylla and Charybdis, and the Gorge of
Despair and many names of classic derivation.
"Devil's Crags from Palisade Creek Canyon" — this is on the
Middle Fork of the Kings country. "Cascade, Palisade Creek Canyon."
I forget what mountain that is. And this is "The North Palisade;"
this is looking northeast — big thunderstorm is building up.
Teiser: Did you often have to work on very sloping ground?
Adams: Oh no. You'd come to the top of a ridge. Then maybe use a long
lens, which would avoid foreground.
"Rocks and Grass" — that's typical of almost anywhere in the
Sierra.
"Mount Winchell" is one of the Palisades — the northern area.
This is at sunset. It is a telephotograph taken from eight miles
away.
Teiser: How long a lens was that?
Adams: Well, it's what they call an adjustable telephoto, a Dallmeyer
Adon, which has a positive lens in the front which picks up the
image, and then a negative lens in the back which magnifies it in
relation to the extension. It's not optically very good, but I
have done some pretty good things with it .
273
Adams: Then "Mather Pass" — that's going over from the Middle Fork to the
South Fork, Kings.
And "Marion Lake" was up in Cartridge Creek. This is named
after Joe LeConte's first wife, Helen Marion Gompertz. And her
ashes are there, and a little plaque on a beautiful rock somewhere
over here. This was taken with a glass plate. Later we took the
Sierra Club outing party across this country, which is about the
roughest thing we've ever done, fifteen, twenty miles from Granite
Pass. And it was really a tough thing, and the packers were so
glad to see the pass down to the lake. But getting one hundred
animals over this rough stuff is really terrific.
And "Arrow Peak from Cartridge Pass" — Cartridge Pass goes over
into the upper South Fork of the Kings. And then when you cross
over beyond Arrow Peak you're going into the Kern River Sierra.
And "Pinchot Peak," which is really Mount Wynne: I misnamed
it. And again, the cloud shadows are marvelous. I remember working
very hard on that one. Obviously at timber line.
Here is "Mount Clarence King," and this is in the upper South
Fork of the Kings River, and there's a little non sequitur here.
I mean, if you're going in a given direction, these pictures
aren't in the right sequence.
Teiser: They're not entirely as you would go?
Adams: No. Then "Rae Lakes" and the Red Dragon.
Teiser: The water must have been extremely still there.
Adams: Well, there are little ripples, but sometimes the lakes are just
mirrors.
"The Mount Brewer Group from Glen Pass." And this is made
with a twelve-inch process lens on a four by five film. It is very
sharp.
Teiser:: Have you often used process lenses?
Adams: Well, I had one for years — still have it. One of the sharpest
lenses I've got. It's just a little thing. It's twelve inches
focal length and a maximum aperture of f/11, so the diameter of the
lens is only a little over an inch.
Teiser: I thought they did something strange optically.
Adams: Well, as you stop down you usually have to refocus; the process
lenses are corrected for near objects. If you don't remember that,
as you stop the lens down, you have to change the lens position,
because it's not corrected for infinity.
274
Adams: Then "Manzanita Twigs" could be anywhere in the Sierra.
"Peaks and Talus, Kings River Canyon" — this is the Grand
Sentinel. This is taken at the bottom of a huge rock pile, looking
up four thousand feet.
The "Kearsarge Pinnacles" are in the upper Kings, on the way
to Kearsarge Pass, and Forester Pass, which leads into the Kern
River Sierra. This is "Junction Peak," near Forester Pass. We were
there on a good juicy, icy year, because usually this is probably
all clear of ice even in July.
Teiser: About what time of year would this have been?
Adams: Oh, this was in July, late July.
Then when you're over in the Kern, you have the "Diamond Mesa,"
where the timber line is very high.
"Milestone Mountain," that's right, taken from a place just
a few feet above timber line. That is on the Kings-Kern divide.
It goes from the Kaweah Range north to Hamilton Pass.
Then there's "Mount Whitney" from the rear, above Crabtree
Meadow —
Teiser: What's the shadow —
Adams: Well, it's late in the day. These are all shadows of big gorges,
you see. It's very impressive — one of my best pictures, I think.
Quiet things are happening in the sky that are nice.
Then here's the "Whitney Pinnacles (East Face)" and that's
from a five by seven negative.
Then "Sky Parlor Meadow" is in the Kaweah group at the base
of the Kaweah Range. It is a big meadow on the Chagoopah Plateau.
Moraine Lake, Sky Parlor are all very high in that area. "Rock and
Water" (a typical Sierra scene). "Mount Kaweah, Moraine Lake"— the
Red Kaweah and the Black Kaweah in the distance.
Teiser: Red Kaweah is the —
Adams: The big rounded peak. And then here's the "Kaweah Peaks from Little
Five Lakes." The Red Kaweah 's way down to the right. In fact, up
in the Chagoopah Plateau is where I found my meteorite.
And this is the Black Kaweah, then the Middle and the Red.
That is a tree that's just fallen; we are looking over to the peaks
of the Kern Canyon.
275
Adams: And this is "Lake and Cliffs," known as Precipice Lake on the way
through Sequoia Park, over the Kaweah Gap, as they call it, which
leads you into the Kern River Sierra.
Teiser: Are these made before your Canyon de Chelly pictures?
Adams : Oh yes .
Teiser: Thank you so much for going through your book.
Adams: This is my own copy. You know, there are series of about five
or six copies of the ten copies that weren't numbered. [Reading]
"Five hundred copies." Well, there should have been, say, 510.
"The book was printed... by Wilder and Ellen Bentley." But it's
very funny — they say, "engravings and prints." Well, what they
mean — they tipped in engravings which came from the Lakeside Press,
Chicago. *
Teiser: Well, thank you!
Adams: Now, I don't think that was too much of an ordeal. Boy, this tape
is going to be priceless for all these verbal accidents! [Laughter]
I find it very difficult to remember dates. I can usually
remember places. I can't remember some of those rock pictures,
except that first one, which I know was up in the Virginia Canyon —
Cold Creek — in the northern part of Yosemite. But for the "Rock
and Grass" and the others, I just have a complete blank. I can
still see myself with the camera there, but I can't geographically
place them. Of course, the Sierra is so similar, in certain
geological belts, that you really can't tell. An expert could pick
out a different type of granite, or some other minute variations.
When you go up Cartridge Creek, you have a marvelous stone
that is crystalline, shiny, multicolored, and that will blend into
granite, and the granite yields to slate — metamorphic rock is the
real name for it. It may not be the true "slate" we know of.
Then there's traces of great volcanic action-
cap, and so on.
•the ancient lava
And then jointed granite and granite that's been glaciated and
formed the roche moutonnee that you find around Merced Lake, Tenaya
Lake, and in the Yosemite country in general. I know very well if
a subject is in the Rockies or in the Cascades. But I can't pin
point things in the Sierra.
*Part of R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
276
Skiing in the Mountains
Teiser: In the 1930 Sierra Club Bulletin you had an article on a ski trip.
Skiing was apparently quite new then in this country.
Adams: Yes, they'd been making experiments with skiing in Yosemite, and
the company was trying to promote ski activity in the winter.
They had a miserable little ski hill called "The Moraine" which
is in the east end of the valley. The Tenaya Glacier and the
Merced Glacier joined here and made a medial (I think it's called)
moraine. And I think the whole thing's about 110 feet high, and
when they have show on the north side you can ski down it. But
that was a pretty pitiful ski situation.
Then they built a little hut up on Mount Watkins and would
take animals up as far as they could get up the zigzags of the
Snow Creek Trail. The skiing up there is pretty wonderful. But
all I did was cross-country skiing — climb with seal skins, employ
telemark turns and sitzmarks and everything unorthodox you can
imagine .
In 1930 I took this trip to get photographs, with the group
that went around the High Sierra camps to fill the ice houses.
We'd go to Lake Tenaya, and would spend two or three days filling
the ice houses with snow, and I'd try to photograph as best I
could. The ski instructor, Jules Fritsch, and myself would go off
to the high places. We got into pretty tough scrapes sometimes
because we really didn't know too much about cross-country skiing
in the Sierra.
We went to Glen Aulin and then to Tuolumne Meadows, whereupon
everybody came down with some sort of food poisoning from a bad
can of food. I was the only one that escaped. And here I was all
alone, a storm was coming up, and all these four people were sick
as dogs. Should have been hospitalized. We were there for three
or four days .
Finally they recovered. The last day we got up at two in the
morning; it was six below zero (this is Tuolumne Meadows), and we
started out over Tuolumne Pass and down to Merced Lake. And there
was no place to stay. There was no food at the ranger camp, so we
went on to the Merced Lake Camp. And that was the most exhausting
thing I've ever done because I had a fifty-pound pack; had to climb
up to the top of the pass and then photograph and then go down, and
when we got down about fifteen hundred feet into the Merced Canyon
the snow would break through the manzanita. We'd collapse; we'd go
through the tangle and we'd take spills, one after the other.
277
Adams: We got down to the ranger cabin at the foot of the trail, and the
bears had gotten into it and there was nothing left. So we had to
ski further in mush, as they call it, to the Merced Lake camp, and
we were able to get something there. But we were absolutely so
tired we couldn't see straight.' We spent one day doing nothing.
While the others were filling the ice house, Jules and I went up to
Lake Washburn (I have quite a number of pictures), then returned
the final thirteen miles to the valley.
Teiser: How could you carry your equipment?
Adams: In a knapsack. It was all up in the pack.
I had one very amusing occurrence. I had my camera in my
knapsack, with my tripod sticking up and I was following Jules
Fritsch, who was a very accomplished skier. As we came down the
slopes from Tuolumne Pass we encountered a group of alders, and
Jules ducks and goes right through this group. I do exactly the
same thing but did not realize that my tripod was sticking up
above my head. The tripod catches in these alders, and my skis go
up and lace in the trees. They had to come to get me out and take
my skis off, and then unravel them from the alder branches. Of
course if I'd broken a ski, I'd have been in dire trouble, or worse
trouble if I'd broken a leg. But that was the most awful spot to
be in!! All I can remember is suddenly feeling the pull back and
seeing the skis go up with a loud whack. But I didn't break them.
Teiser: You mean to say that there were four of you out skiing that far
away without an extra pair of skis or a pair of snowshoes or
anything?
Adams: Yes. It was very foolish, extremely foolish. Well, there was a
pair of snowshoes in these various camps. Some of them had been
chewed up by animals. But that wouldn't do you any good if you
broke an ankle or a leg. I don't know what you'd do. I guess
they'd just cut down some trees and make a sled and haul you. You
have to figure that you have so many miles to go. If you're a fast
walker, you 'go between four and five an hour, and a fast skier
downhill can go very fast. But under different conditions you might
take two or three hours for a mile. If there's ten miles, there's
twenty or thirty hours. No way out of it; nothing else to do.
Teiser: Well, you must have been a pretty good skier.
Adams: Oh no. Pretty good cross country, in that I had a lot of
endurance. And I could make what they call a telemark turn, which
is the first thing we learned, where you bend the knee in the inner
part of the curve. It's quite a graceful turn. We didn't have the
Christiana at that time at all. Of course, it's as complicated as
278
Adams: golf is now. There's all kinds of wax for different things, and
different kinds of skis and different kinds of bindings. The old
bindings you would just latch on and the leg would come apart
before it would leave the ski. Now they have bindings that under
a certain stress will give way, you see, which saves lots of bones.
But still it's a very accident- infested sport.
Teiser: Did you go on skiing?
Adams: Oh, I did a little, but I never liked it. I liked the cross
country, but we did not have winter camping equipment. Now, you
know, they can go out for weeks with all this beautiful equipment.
I have a space blanket, for instance, which is aluminum foil, and
it's light as a feather. If you put the foil [surface on the
inside] around you, in ten minutes you're hot. And in hot weather,
you put the foil around you on the outside and you're cool. And
they have these two- or three-pound down sleeping bags, and the
way you do it now, you just dig a hole in the snow and sleep, and
keep out the moving air, because the chill factor can be very bad
in high altitudes with cold and wind.
Teiser: Well, did the Sierra Club interest continue interesting itself in
skiing?
Adams: Oh yes. They have important ski Sections now. Ski mountaineering-
cross country skiing — is very much in vogue now, which I think is a
wonderful way to really enjoy the wilderness. Skimobiles are
atrocious. They're just a horrible intrusion. And while they
don't do direct physical damage, because they are on snow, they do
create noise and aesthetic damage, and they disturb wildlife, of
which a surprising amount is out in winter. And they destroy any
sense of wilderness you have. But their tracks will melt. But
of course some of them want to clear routes. They want an open
forest so they can go through these like you do with a ski lift.
But that's only a short distance. The average snowmobile track
will be many miles long, which I'm very much against.
Teiser: I read somewhere that you moved your main residence to Yosemite
Valley— was it in 1937?
Adams: Yes. My wife's father [Harry C. Best] died in 1936 in San
Francisco. And then we negotiated; in fact, her father had formed
a little family corporation, which allowed continuity. The general
idea had been that when the individual concessioner died, that was
the end. We applied to take it on, and the National Park Service
agreed, and we moved up there in '37. We were there for quite a
few years as our basic home, and rented the San Francisco place.
Well, it was impossible for me to do professional work in Yosemite;
it's illegal for an individual to do any private work. So I had to
279
Adams: come back to San Francisco and set up my headquarters. And then the
kids were in school in Yosemite and Mariposa. So we commuted.
After getting a good manager in Yosemite we moved to San Francisco.
The Sierra and Other Ranges
Adams: I never missed a year in Yosemite since 1916. Never a minimum of
less than five or six trips — well, except in the first five years,
when my trips were just in the summer. But I think about 1926 or
'27 I was there three or four times; in '28 only twice; '29 very
much. So in a sense it's always been a second home.
Teiser: Twenty-eight was the year you were married, wasn't it?
Adams: Yes. And I went to Canada with the Sierra Club.
Teiser: You were on that high mountain trip in Canada?
Adams: Yes.
Teiser: Jasper —
Adams: Jasper and Mount Robson, but I did not go to Yellowstone in 1929.
Teiser: Did you publish any of the Jasper pictures?
Adams: A few in the Sierra Club Bulletin.
Teiser: Did you enjoy photographing there?
Adams: Well, some of it's pretty good, but it's not like the Sierra.
Sedimentary rocks do not have the shapes and the strength. The
Canadian Rockies have a wonderful mood, but it's one of the most
infested areas you can possibly imagine — mosquitoes, horseflies;
bad trails and very erratic weather. Of course it's quite far
north, so you're always up at two in the morning to start climbing.
And climbing was very dangerous because it's friable rock.
It's another world, and it's very spectacular. Something like
Glacier Park. In fact, Glacier and Waterman Park are much the same.
As far as I can make out from pictures, the Selkirks probably give
more the feeling of the Sierra, being more craggy and pointed. But
whenever you get into lava or sedimentary rock, you do not have the
clean-cut form that you get with crystalline rocks.
Now, I don't know what the Matterhorn is — I think that is a
hard metamorphic, and that's all right. I guess — well, a geologist
might scold me — I refer to a very hard, flinty rock. In Hawaii
280
Adams: everything is lava. The Rocky Mountains is largely rolling country
and of sedimentary rock. It's extremely dangerous to climb on.
You're climbing up what amounts to a rock pile that just slides
under you. Well, the top of Rogers Peak in Yosemite Park is
something like that. In fact, one day we got up to within two
hundred feet of the summit, and it was just too dangerous.
Teiser: The Grand Canyon —
Adams: That's all sedimentary.
Teiser: I think I read somewhere that when you first saw it you were kind
of unimpressed.
Adams: Well, it's a totally different experience, you see. You get into
the granite gorge in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But
practically all of the Southwest is layer after layer after layer
of sedimentary and colorful rock which has been elevated.
I'm conscious of the fact that there are tremendous mountain
ranges all over the world. I've seen thousands of photographs.
And I'm convinced that the Sierra is unique in structure. At
least the Sierra seems to be the most livable range. I mean, most
of the other mountains have terrible climates.
Alaska weather can be excruciating! For instance, I spent
twenty-five days in the Glacier Bay area in 1948. There were only
five clear days the whole time. I had six fine days at Mount
McKinley in 1947, which was absolutely unusual if you saw the
mountain for that long a time. The Himalayas must be terrible —
sudden disastrous weather conditions. And the Alps — a storm can
come up within half an hour. A sudden shift of air, and then you
have some serious condition. I don't know about the Caucasus —
they're probably fairly tough too, the way they look. Much of the
Rockies and the Tetons are beautiful, but there's nothing that
has the particular intimacy of the Sierra. Which I don't think
of as much as mountains as natural sculpture.
Teiser: And the vegetation?
Adams: The vegetation's extraordinary, but we don't have these rock and
ice challenges like they do on the great Alpine peaks. Thousands
of feet of ice and snow.
And the Cascades are very beautiful, and have a great rise
above base, but they have terrible weather problems. The north
slope of Mount Rainier has a wonderful forest. But there's just
something about the Sierra that is extraordinary. We're intimately
connected with it, but I think it's probably the most subtle and in
exhaustible mountain range. It certainly is infested with more
people than any other equivalent area now.
281
Teiser: Is it? More than Yellowstone even?
Adams: Well, Yellowstone isn't a mountain range.
Teiser: That's right.
Adams: There are a few small ranges in it, like the Ibex Peak area.
Glacier Park is quite beautiful, but again, it's of sedimentary,
stratified rock.
[End Tape 11, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 11, Side 2]
Adams: I must say for the record that I've traveled very little. I've
been in the Tetons and in the southern Rockies, and a little of the
Sangre de Cristo, very little in the San Juan Range. Just one
excursion into the Uintas near Salt Lake. And in the White
Mountains, which are east of the Sierra. And then a little in the
Southern California Sierras, which are rather dreadful. I mean,
barren. And in the Sierra Nevada— and Cascades.
Teiser: British Columbia?
Adams: Yes, British Columbia, Robson and Tonquin in Jasper, the Rockies.
And then in Alaska. But never climbing mountains. I never climbed
anything in Alaska.
Alaska
Teiser: You were in Alaska in the forties —
Adams: Two trips, 1947 and 1948.
Teiser: How did you happen to go there?
Adams: Part of the national park project. Glacier Bay National Monument,
and Mount McKinley National Park.
Oh yes, my greatest experience of all, I guess, was flying
from Ketchikan over the coast range at Sunset. We came up to
Juneau, leaving Ketchikan at 10:30 p.m.
We left in the Fish and Wildlife plane. We got off at four
in the morning, my son Mike* and I. (He was just a kid.) The
governor had arranged for us to go on the first flight of the Fish
and Wildlife plane, which was the survey flight to see if a lot of
*Michael Adams.
282
Adams: fishermen in these bays and inlets were really behaving. And this
was a Grumman Amphibian. It was the first time Mike had ever been
in a plane. And the takeoff, with the two big motors right over
head, is extremely noisy, and Mike — maybe that started him out on
his flying career — his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
We took off from Juneau and went over, within a few hundred
feet of the mountain range to the east, looked down and could see
bear and other game in the meadows. Well, it got very rough and
the wind gusty, and we kept on making landings in all these little
sounds and bays and taxiing up to people in boats and asking for
their fishing licenses. This is the first day of the season; did
they have it? And when they didn't have it they got a citation.
Then we'd take off for more victims.
Starting at four in the morning, remember the sun was quite
high. So we got all the way down to Ketchikan about two in the
afternoon. Had lunch, and then the crew disappeared for two or
three hours on business. As we landed at Ketchikan, which was the
first time we landed on the ground, the pilot discovered that the
maintenance man had forgotten to put any hydraulic fluid in the
left wheel plunger. Now, if you've been in a Grumman, there's
only about two or three feet distance between the ground and the
fuselage, and these little wheels come down without much space to
spare!
Our pilot was extremely good, and as soon as he landed he knew
something was wrong, so he gunned the plane up, and he said, "Will
you all get over on the right side and keep your weight on that
side? I have plunger trouble, and we'll make a landing on one
wheel," which we did. And finally came down, and the pontoons on
the wings on the right side bounced. Then he tried to get it fixed
there and couldn't; they didn't have the right equipment to get the
fluid into the cylinder. So we had to take off on one wheel, and we
all had to stay over on the right side. I really was a little
worried there, because at a high speed you can get a ground loop.
But we took off; it was very late in the day — ten o'clock. We flew
up the coast range at evening — sunset, right along the crest. It
was just like the Sierra during the Ice Age. You'd see things like
Half Dome emerging from the ice and many beautiful peaks and the
incredible color of sunset and all these big glaciers, you know,
flowing down to the sea.
We landed at Juneau at about 11:30 p.m. That was really a
day.
I had another flight with an exploration party. This was the
supply plane, and these people were surveying and traveling all
around some of these very high peaks of the coast range. The
function of this plane was to drop supplies at certain locations.
283
Adams: The explorers had put out a red-orange cloth on the snow. You'd
see this little speck. Then we'd fly over and drop the load of
supplies.
I was in one of the compartments with a big sliding floor over
it, roped in, trying to get pictures. We went around these big
peaks, and all of a sudden it grayed over.
When you're in snow country and the sky goes gray, you don't
know whether you're at six hundred feet or six feet or six thousand'.
In such conditions the rule is to get out as quick as you can.
The same thing happens in very still water. If the amphibian
plane comes down in still water, you can't tell how far up you are.
We had to throw wads of newspaper around in Glacier Bay a couple of
times, to know what the elevation was.
Teiser: To make the water ripple?
Adams: No, to give an object that you can focus on. In that case, they
put the nose of the plane up and just drift in, and the tail of the
plane hits first and you hear a hissing sound. But you can't tell
much. You're going too fast to see anything if your paper goes by.
So that was quite a flight. And then we had several flights
into Glacier Bay and several places where we had to go up and down
and taxi on the water and see if there was no ice. Because a
relatively small piece of ice can do an awful lot of damage to the
plane's fuselage.
But flying in Alaska is just like taking a taxi. There's no
other way. Well, I suppose there is, but to walk in the tundra
and the wet stuff or go by boat — oh, terrific! It's a long way.
Aerial Photography
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Have you done much aerial photography?
Well, no, I can't say much. I've done some, and the two things I
did in Fiat Lux were the rice fields in the northern Sacramento
Valley and the freeway in Los Angeles. I'm very happy about those;
they're very good.
You must have been low over the freeway.
284
Adams: I was, illegally, two thousand feet down, and we were flying with a
good pilot, and when 1 told him what I wanted, he said, "Well,
these regulations; okay if they don't watch you too closely." The
police helicopter passed under us about 150 feet below, enough to
rock the plane, and he said, "Well there's no point in immediately
going up now. They've got me if they're going to get me, so just
go ahead and do this job."
So we were going right over the crowded freeway. I kept
thinking, "A single-engine plane!" If that motor had conked out,
where would we have landed? I was very glad to get back to Santa
Monica. He never got a citation. [Laughter]
Teiser: Do you use ordinary equipment or aerial — ?
Adams: I have Louise Boyd's Fairchild aerial camera, which she used in
Greenland. She used it mostly for five by seven stills on the
ground. With a complete set of magnificent filters (optical-flat
filters). But now with cameras like the Hasselblad, and the
beautiful lenses and filters and a little high-wing plane, you can
do awfully well. Of course now, photogrammetry surveying and really
accurate mapping stuff — that requires very precise equipment and
materials. The slit photography is terrific. There's electronic
sensors that pick up patterns of objects, a difference of light and
shade on the ground, compute them, and establish the speed of the
plane, and that controls the speed of the film moving by the slit.
And at sixty thousand feet you can see gravel between railroad ties.
But that takes special ultra-thin emulsions and extreme precision of
operation.
I can't call myself an aerial photographer at all. I think I
would like it, but you see, when you're working that way you have
to have a high-wing plane and you usually take the door off. And
you have to keep the camera out of the slip stream. The novices
would go up with, say, something like a Speed Graphic, and they'd
just get so excited they'd lean out, and the slip stream hits the
camera and WOW — away goes the bellows! [Laughter] But in a certain
space you don't feel the air at all, you see. But if you put your
hand out too far you may break your wrist, even at ordinary speeds.
Ever put your hand out driving a car on the highway on a hot
day? Well, that's nothing, but if you were going 150 miles per
hour and more, you can break your arm.
Teiser: Do you know the photographer who's been taking aerial pictures of
the Bay Area? He lives in the East Bay.
Adams: Well, there's a Sunder land.
Teiser: Yes, Clyde Sunder land.
285
Adams: He is a very factual, an extremely competent record photographer.
The greatest aerial artist is Bill Garnett. Nobody can touch
Garnett. He doesn't do the ordinary kind of work, you see.
Sunderland is a person that will make you a completely accurate
aerial survey or photograph. Then there's a man named Bob [Robert]
Campbell who has done some perfectly beautiful things of salt flats
and other subjects. Creative photography in the air is a terribly
important phase of the medium.
In fact, Bill Garnett is somebody who is worthy of an
autobiographic approach, because there's nobody who can touch him
anywhere. There's never been any aerial pictures made that are as
beautiful and as convincing. What he does with the natural forms!
He pilots his own plane. He's a very fine flyer.
You see, when I'm photographing, I'm sitting with the pilot,
and I'll say, "Now, I think it's coming! Now, you turn a little
to the left and then bank." Well, if he's sympathetic, he knows.
But you know you don't drive a plane like an automobile. By the
time you say those things you're quite a little ways off. So
getting a few pictures may mean a four-hour flight. The pilot
would bank, but you wouldn't get it right. And then he'd go a
little further back, bank again, and you were too close!
Now Bill Garnett can sit in there and he can control the plane
with his knees and make his photographs. Because, under good
conditions, the plane can drift and float along — if you're a good
enough pilot to pull it out of a spin, etc.
The plane becomes part of the creative instrument, and that's
the important thing about Bill. In all my experience, and I've
seen thousands of pictures, there's nobody that can come anywhere
near him in the aesthetic command of his subject.
Teiser: Does he work in black and white?
Adams: Yes, and in color. Beautiful stuff. Lives up in Napa; Congress
Valley Road. Teaches design at the University of California. Doing
a wonderful job. I'd really recommend him as somebody to be
interviewed.
There are some other aerial photographers, but for some reason
or other they don't "click;" I guess it's a matter of anticipation,
because things happen pretty fast. Garnett has a picture of an
estuary that looks just like the branching of a tree. A most
beautiful thing. My friend [David H.] McAlpin has got one. It's a
print about twenty-four by thirty-six inches — all black and white,
on a black block. Something like that monument in 2001! And all it
is is just these lines, and the estuary, the light shining on the
286
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
water, just like a great branching tree. It was an absolutely
honest photograph; there's no retouching. And then he did the
one of the birds flying against the water. It's in [This Is] The
American Earth. And the great picture of Los Angeles — that
terrifying perspective.
Oh yes. In the same book.
But I can't begin to tell you how great I think he is.
one of the great living artists .
I think he's
But you can't count me as an aerial photographer at all. I've
written a little chapter on some of the technical elements, which
are very simple. I think the technical point is very simple to
manage, but the aesthetic — getting the moment and the point of
view. .. .You're moving at a fairly high speed and the closer you
are to the object, the shorter the exposure must be. You have to
use filters to cut your blue atmospheric haze. You have to use
rather high speed film, with a four times filter, and you have to
develop for more than normal contrast because contrast lessens as
you go higher. You can get poor image quality in black and white,
and lots of grain.
Now, in color you don't have high speeds, but the aerial
lenses, the lenses that are corrected for infinity, work best at
very large apertures — say up to f/2 or 2.8 — and that permits you
to make short-exposure photographs. I have this new Hasselblad
with a 100 millimeter lens, which is corrected for extreme
definition. Al Weber uses it, and he said there's nothing like it
at all. Use the lens wide open, at f/4, and it's absolutely
diamond sharp; the lens is designed for infinity function. There's
no focussing. Everything has to be very accurate at infinity. But
if you use a monochromatic filter, like a red, green, or blue,
you'll get an extremely sharp image, with single-component lenses
which are not corrected for chromatic aberration.
I have a picture taken in Tuolumne Meadows of a skier coming
down Lembert Dome; it's done on orthochromatic film with a Graphic
camera and a Kodak Zeiss Tessar lens. It is incredibly sharp.
When I tried to use that lens on panchromatic film it was terrible,
because it wasn't corrected in the red area of the spectrum. In
other words, it focussed the reds at a different plane, so every
thing was fuzzy, you see. So with panchromatic film I'd have to
use with it a minus-red filter, keeping the transmission
orthochromatic (blue and green), and I'd get a very sharp image.
There's all these little things that a lot of people don't
realize.
287
and the Sit
Teiser: This is our copy of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada that, you see,
has been well used. Would you go over it with us?
Adams: Yes. [Looking at book] Well, what I did with this book was to
consider the whole Sierra Nevada system. But the fact is that
when we think about our boundaries of the national parks, they
don't have any reality in nature. You know, the system is: here's
the ocean, and the rivers go back into the mountains. So the
pictures are in order of John Muir's experience — he came in to San
Francisco from the sea. This first one is taken before the Bridge
was built — 1932 or '33.* And that's one of the worst reproductions
ever made of "The Golden Gate."
And the second one is a foothill in the coast range, not too
far from here. ["In the Mount Diablo Range, near Pacheco Pass"]
It's not near Pacheco Pass, that's a mistake. It's about fifty
miles south, but it's in the same country.
And then, here's the great San Joaquin Valley, with these
storm clouds ["Rain Clouds Over the San Joaquin Valley"]. And John
Muir went through that when it was a garden of wild flowers.
Teiser: Did you just happen upon that?
Adams: We were driving, and I suddenly saw it; I get out and make a
photograph. This is a very rich image, but these are, might I say,
lousy reproductions I The Land of Little Rain is much better.
But you see, here, I've seen the Golden Gate, now I'm crossing
the coast range, then into the San Joaquin Valley, then into the
foothills of the Sierra. And these statements [quotations printed
on the pages opposite the photographs] of course are from Muir.
And this ["Slate Outcroppings , Sierra Foothills"] is on the way to
Yosemite. He probably passed this way with his sheep. And here are
sheep ["Flock of Sheep, Sierra Foothills"]. This happens to be a
little further north; it may be fifty miles north of Yosemite, but
it's — you know — exactly the same kind of country. And this again
["Dead Oak Tree, Sierra Foothills, Above Snelling"] is very typical
of the country near Hornitos, above Snelling.
*It is dated 1932 in the book.
288
Adams: Then the first view of Yosemite; this is taken from a point about
a thousand feet west of the tunnel, in a thunderstorm ["Yosemite
Valley"].
And then you come into the detail of the valley, in autumn
["Cathedral Rocks, Autumn Tree, Yosemite Valley"], and the Merced
River cascades ["River Cascade, Yosemite Valley"]. And a very
tranquil scene, of which I have several variations ["Late Autumn
Evening, Merced Canyon West of Ribbon Creek, Below Yosemite Valley"].
This isn't the best one. Down in the Merced Canyon in autumn. All
these are supposed to glow, you know, showing separate leaves and
details.
And "El Capitan;" "Three Brothers;" "Cascade Fall;" floor of
the valley ["On the Floor of Yosemite Valley"]. The lower valley
in winter ["Winter, Yosemite Valley"], a horrible reproduction; just
unbelievably bad.
Teiser: How does the original differ from that?
Adams: Well, the original is a very rich, subtle photograph, with all the
whites separated. All this snow gleams. All this snow white is
different from the clouds. This is just one of the worst repro
ductions you can imagine.
"Nevada Fall" is fair, but perfectly flat light. Even in the
print it's very difficult to get water texture, because it's
absolutely "flat." And you see the rainbow — it's 40° in angle to
the sun, so the shadow of your head would be down about here. And
I have to tell you about an experience — something that has to be
seen, because it's hard to describe. But, if you put your left
thumb to your nose and make a gesture which is considered rather
vulgar, then take the thumb of the right hand and put it to the
little finger of the left and stretch it at right angles to your
left hand, it will describe a 40° arc. Now, if your hands are
small or big, as long as they're the same size, it doesn't make
any difference. But you can find out where a rainbow is going to
be. Because if you point this finger at the shadow of your head,
here is the rainbow area at 40° plus or minus. [Laughter]
Well, we had an experience when I was doing that one time at
Bridalveil Falls, all alone. And I thought, "I have two or three
hours to wait." I could see that, because it would take quite a
time to get the rainbow anywhere near the falls. I was describing
the arc (I think it's 42.3°, something like that. I'm not that
accurate). I turned around, and here are two elderly ladies
looking at me in amazement. And I said, "I'm just trying to find a
rainbow." Whereupon they stepped back two or three paces. I said,
"No, really. I'll give you the technique." So they both came over.
And I said, "Now you see the shadow of your head. Now you put your
289
Adams: finger up here, right along the eye, and your little finger is right
on the shadow of your head, and now do this, and right where the
little finger is, is the arc of the rainbow." Well, that was
interesting. They were doing it. Then we turned around, and a
whole busload of people had arrived, and they were all looking at
us with their mouths open, you know, and I said to them, "We're
just trying to find rainbows," whereupon they all got back in the
bus and went off. [Laughter] That's a true story; it was one of
the funniest things.
Well, number seventeen ["Crags on the South Wall, Yosemite
Valley"] is just crags on the south side of Yosemite Valley. This
is Glacier Point. Then the Mariposa Grove in winter. More Yosemite
in the spring ["Yosemite Fall, Orchard in Blossom"]. Back to
Yosemite in winter ["North Dome, Winter"], with a detail ["Winter
Forest"]; sunset clouds ["Storm Clouds"].
I guess we decided on sequence on an aesthetic basis. Dogwood
["Dogwood Blossoms"]; top of Yosemite Fall ["Yosemite Fall"]. These
are all Yosemite, and it goes on for quite a little while until you
begin to get in the High Sierra —
V. Adams: [Comes in] This is Liliane De Cock.
Adams: She's worked with me more than nine years, you know. She married
Douglas Morgan, my publisher. She's doing a wonderful job. She's
been working on my monograph.
[Back to book] Well, "Merced River Below Merced Lake,"
different forests, Half Dome in a storm. Then there's just a few
of the High Sierra, which we feel, if we do it again, must be in
better balance.
Teiser: You'd put more of the High Sierra in?
Adams: I think I would. Lyell Fork of the Merced. Tenaya Lake again;
Big Trees, Merced Lake — I look at it now and I don't see why I made
this particular sequence.
That's the most beautiful juniper I guess there is, up in
Triple Peak Canyon ["Juniper, Upper Merced Canyon"]. Nobody ever
sees it. I'd like to go up again. Tuolumne Meadows, and then it
goes on into higher country. Now it goes over the Tuolumne Pass,
which is to the south, and Merced Canyon. This is typical ["Grove
of Lodgepole Pine"].
Here comes "Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake," a hideous
reproduction again! And Mono Lake on the east side. Then we go
way down south, you see. Mount Williamson on the east side. Moro
Rock in Sequoia.
290
Telser: How did that book get started? Did the publishers ask you for it?
Adams: Yes. Well, it was done with Hough ton Mifflin —
Teiser: There's a review of it here from the San Francisco Chronicle .
Adams: Oh, I didn't see that. Let me see.
Teiser: Joseph Henry Jackson wrote it. I think he must have reviewed all
your work.
Adams: Yes, he was very good to me.
Incidentally, you see how this clipping yellows. That's
because of the sulphur content of the pulp paper. [After reading
it] Yes, that's a nice review. Can you make me a copy of that
some time, because I really don't think I have one.
Teiser: Sure.
Adams: Well, I think the books in the main have been successful, but it
wasn't until considerably later years when we really began to think
of fine reproductions. That's when the "My Camera" series came,
My Camera in Yosemite Valley, then My Camera in Point Lobos by
Edward Weston, then My Camera in the National Parks. These were
done by the H.S. Crocker Company — beautiful press work, and the
engravings were done by Walter Mann, with Mr. Raymond Peterson in
charge. Now, I think we've mentioned this before, but these were
really milestones, because I still think they're the best letter
press engravings ever made.
But letterpress is now passe and hardly anybody knows how to
use it, and the two-plate offset is far superior as far as tone
control. So these books, if they're republished, would be done in
offset. By somebody of George Waters 's quality.
Teiser: Do various people do press work for George Waters?
Adams: No, he is a producer. In other words, he makes the plates and does
the actual printing. Now, we did a big advertising campaign for the
Wolverine people [Wolverine World Wide Inc.], and he made negatives
for them.
Teiser: Oh yes. I sent in a dollar for a poster-size reproduction of one.
Adams: Wolverine had four thousand orders on that first advertisement —
extremely satisfying, you know. Waters didn't do that. He did the
catalogue. (I have to give you one of the catalogues.) He did the
plates for that, but they had to be printed in the East. Very
291
Adams: complicated. He did the negatives from the prints. Then the
negatives go off and are "separated" and printed by whatever
printer does the job. This one was printed in Michigan. Then
Waters made the negatives for the advertisement, which they would
take and enlarge to any size they want. So he was trying to
capture my photograph — the quality — which he could do better than
a person who didn't understand it. But the reproduction in [the
advertisement in] Life and so on was lousy anyway, so it really
doesn't make much difference, you know.
And those plates go out as paper matrices, usually, and of
course, Life is printed in quite a few places simultaneously. And
you know, when you get Time and Life out here, you get advertise
ments relating to the West Coast, and if you're in the Midwest, you
get advertisements relating to the Midwest, and so on in the East
and Europe.
It's a very complicated thing. The pattern is set up and
there's so many pages of ads, which are made up in the particular
area, which fit into the main plates which come from the main
editorial office.
Teiser: I think the reproduction that I saw was in the Examiner Sunday
gravure section recently.
Adams: Oh, was it there?
Teiser: And I thought it came out quite well.
Adams: I've only seen the one in Life. But they spent a fantastic amount
of money on these advertising campaigns. I guess that one page in
Life was probably $45,000, just for that issue.
Teiser: But what a wonderful way to advertise!
Adams: They're very good. And then that little column off to one side.
We're hoping we can continue.
Yosemite Photography Workshops
Teiser: Back to Yosemite — do you want to start now or do you want to leave
this for tomorrow or the next day? We'd like to ask you about the
history of the workshops — when they started and how they've gone,
and so forth; who's been involved.
Adams: [Somewhat tentatively] I think I can do that.
292
Teiser: The brochure says this is the twenty-sixth year, which would make it
1946—
Adams: Well, no; before the war [World War II], I think, several times we
had what was called the "U.S. Camera, Ansel Adams, Yosemite
Photographic Forum." Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston, Rex Hardy
and myself. We had quite a group.
Teiser: What's happened to Rex Hardy?
Adams: He was here the other day. Lives in England. Is going to move
back here.
We had a big enrollment. And then Hitler invaded something,
and that put on a war scare, so the enrollment was cut down by half;
yet it was satisfactory. Nothing further happened until after the
war. Then we revised it, which I would say was in — when was the
war over?
Harroun: Forty- five.
Adams: I think we had the first one in '46. It's been a continuous
enterprise since, plus several others in the year. Now we have
this June one coming, and Al Weber has a print one in August, and I
have another one in the end of September. But I'm going to have to
back out of it soon and let other people do it more and more. But
the main June workshop is very closely associated with me.
Liliane [De Cock] came out all the way from Scarsdale; she's
going to teach. And Barbara Morgan's coming — her mother-in-law
and a great photographer.
Teiser: Originally, then, it was cosponsored by U.S. Camera?
Adams: The first one was U.S. Camera, with a very elaborate folder. They
had, you know, a magazine.
Teiser: Did you have a big turnout then?
Adams: Well, we had sixty-plus enrolled. Then, as I said, the war had
started in Europe, and it cut down enrollment to less than half.
Eastern people were too scared. Because it was pretty precarious
when Hitler started invading Sudetenland and Austria, etc.
Teiser: Did Edward Weston start teaching again after the war, then?
Adams: No.
Teiser: Was he a good teacher for groups of that sort?
293
Adams: No. He was a very bad teacher, but a wonderful person for an
example. You see, he was like Brett [Weston], his son. Now, Brett
doesn't impart any detailed information. He has no technical
knowledge; he just has his own extraordinary intuitive way. He
goes out with a camera and he sees things the way he sees them, and
lets people look through the ground glass of the big camera — it's
quite a thrilling experience. But technically — he prides himself
on not being able to add five and four, you know. Many artists do
that. But he's perfectly capable of doing it.
Teiser: Did Dorothea Lange have the same sort of individual approach?
Adams: No, her approach was "seeing" and people — the social, human meaning
of photographs. Extremely important. Barbara Morgan — I don't
suggest her as a teacher in the technical sense, but she inspires
people; she comments on their work. She speaks of feeling; she
talks about the intangibles. And those people are just as important
[as those who discuss technical matters.]
Teiser: What did Rex Hardy do?
Adams: Well, Rex was sort of a journalist type.
Teiser: Did he teach classes, or did he work with individuals?
Adams: Well, you see, we don't work that way. We have groups, seminars —
we play it by ear. And the most important thing is to be in the
field. A person has a problem, so you help him out with it. Then
the instructor gives some talks. He can talk about artificial
light, and the small camera, or anything in his field. This year,
we have quite a variety of very good people. We have Dorr Bothwell,
the painter. She's very stimulating.
Teiser: Has she been participating for many years?
Adams : Yes , quite a few years .
Teiser: Your assistant, Gerry Sharpe — ?
Adams: Yes, unfortunately for us all, she died.
Teiser: Could you speak a little about her?
Adams: Gerry was an extremely gifted gal. She had psychological troubles
in adjusting the creative world to the real world. But she was an
extraordinary, fine photographer. She had a little more technical
knowledge than people give her credit for having. She knew. Her
negatives and pictures were always pretty much "there." There
wasn't a lot of trial and error in her work. And she had this very
294
Adams: important, rather impressive emotional feeling about things. Her
greatest ability was to sit down with an individual and talk about
their work. And they'd go away just simply inspired, because she
could really dig into them, if you want to use the term. "Why did
you do this?" she'd say. "Why did you see it this way?" You know,
talk back and forth, instead of being didactic. She got a
Guggenheim, and she went to Ghana, and was starting in on really a
very important program, and made some beautiful photographs, and
then was involved in a tragic accident. A doctor was driving out
to some village in a Volkswagen, and they hit a truck, and she
nearly lost her leg, and was laid up in a hospital there for weeks.
Then she came home and almost died; tropical injuries are bad.
That sort of knocked everything out of her. I mean, she never
really regained the impulse to create. Finally, she had a job in
the Winterthur Museum [Wilmington, Delaware], but I think the
bottle got the best of her and she just couldn't stand being
restricted to a job. She was born in New Jersey, but came west with
the idea of spending her life photographing early Americana. Her
disability really got her down, and then the decline started, and
she just kept drinking, and that was the end of it.
It's typical of very gifted people who can't relate to the
realities of life. Her photographs are quite remarkable. We were
very fond of her, and her passing was a great loss.
Teiser: You've had some very talented people —
Adams: Well, Liliane is just marvelous. She has a Guggenheim fellowship
now, you know. Right after she was married she got that. That was
too much. Her husband figured it out that she'd worked for me nine
years, three months, two weeks and three days. She knew where
everything was. But she's quite a creative person — easily one of
the best of the younger people.
And Don Worth worked for me for several years. He's a very
fine photographer. He teaches art at San Francisco State University.
Teiser: I remember a picture of his of your lighted studio window, from
outside.
Adams: I happen to have a very fine personal collection of photographs.
Never realized what I had. But the Lands very kindly gave us some
Clarence Kennedy portfolios. That in itself is very important. And
then I have all the portfolios of Weston, Minor White, Don Worth,
Dick Julian. Then all kinds of individual prints. [Charles]
Sheeler et al. And I have early Brady images — my prints, though.
I have daguerreotypes. I don't know what to do with them.
295
Adams: I should get an interne, a young person from a college who's
studying photography, and have him come and analyze them and
catalogue them and document them, because you know, a thing like
that is an awful job. Then the next step is the evaluation; then
the next step is what to do with them.
Teiser: I trust they're all dated.'
Adams: Not too many. I'm not the only one that fails on datingl [Laughter]
Well, let's see — the workshops — at first we had only the June
one. Then we decided that when we put in the new darkroom. .. .The
government gave us the renewed fifteen-year contract, and they
always require improvements. We have spent quite a little money
improving the studio and putting in a darkroom, which is a very
good darkroom, especially as a teaching and demonstration one.
There's no reason why we couldn't have workshops and groups
the whole year, but I myself have to withdraw from that because it's
just too much. To get good photographers to come up and conduct
workshops is our present plan. All I can say is I'm the general
director and I'm not going to let some inferior operation go on.
Al Weber, who lives here, is one of our staff members, and he's a
very good photographer. He's having a workshop in August, and
we're going to develop him more. And we're getting in the fall
workshops. We're getting a great variety of photographers, like
Wynn Bullock, and Jerry Uelsman, and top names to come.
And then the Friends of Photography — of course that's another
subject. Maybe you'd better put that down as a separate subject,
because that ties into the theory of the f/64; really it's the
latter-day f/64 group, but with a modern slant, as far as I'm
concerned.
So let me see — what would be logical? Oh, I might say that I
have given workshops in the Museum of Modern Art, and the museum
in Memphis, and Rochester, and many other places. Workshops last
sometimes a week, sometimes they're just two days. I hate the term
"workshop," but there's no other term in the language that seems to
cover exactly what that means. Because a seminar's something where
a whole group of people get together and exchange ideas. In the
Friends of Photography we say we're having an "event," but that's
very ambiguous too.
Teiser: The word has become so closely associated with these workshops,
you'd have a hard time changing it now, I should think.
Adams: Yes — there are so many hundreds of workshops given, and there's
such a fantastic interest in photography. It's a whole new world.
It's really a tremendous thing, and relates to thousands of people.
296
Adams: Of course, the basic idea is that photography is a language; you
have the aesthetic approach, and the documentary, and the
journalistic, and the scientific, and many other categories. We
use the English language to depict the world in the written word.
We have also the photographic language to express the visual
world. And the audio-visual world — well, all colleges, schools,
institutions, companies, all have what is usually called the
audio-visual department. It's a fantastic growth. I mean it's
an industry, something that represents untold millions of dollars
and hundreds of thousands of people working, making slides,
documentary records, etc.
I'm not plugging anybody, but the Bell & Howell people have
just come out with this new copy machine, which happens to cost
seven hundred and something dollars, but it is fantastic in the
sense that it makes copies of anything in just a few seconds. It
makes transparencies for what they call "overhead projection work."
You can make a transparency, and in about two or three minutes have
a hundred or two hundred ditto copies, which you can put in the
hands of the audience while you're projecting images on the screen.
It's one of the great, I think, steps forward, because it's not
litho reproduction, but it is a quick means of communicating type
written pages, copies, letters, even pictures in a crude sense.
Many advanced duplicating systems are being developed.
[End Tape 11, Side 2]
Skill in Music and Photography
[Interview X — 3 June 1972]
[Begin Tape 12, Side 1]
Teiser: ...then your career in music and your career in photography have
been related?
Adams: Yes. Well, I think it was Wilenski who said that all art is the
expression of the same thing. But actually, I don't necessarily
subscribe to — what would you call it? — a two-dimensional, mystical
relationship because when we start reading qualities of one art
into another, we get in trouble. It's like when we try to talk
about pictures, or when people give literary titles to music, like
the Moonlight Sonata.
I think I mentioned once that Huneker criticism of the B flat
minor Sonata of Chopin, which contains the Funeral March (the
"Marche Funebre") , which is really the stylistic interpretation in
the Adagio, but which is used as a funeral march. It was not Chopin's
intention that it be played with a brass band and used in a procession
297
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams :
Teiser:
Adams:
Teiser:
Adams:
Hunneker accepted that Romantic interpretation, and then said the
last movement, which is Presto Furioso, I think, is the "night
winds rushing over the graves." Well, that kind of relationship
to me is completely nauseating. I mean [laughs] it's a concept to
which I can't possibly relate. What happened is that the expressive
capacities of the music were undoubtedly damaged by literary
interpretation. But the best thing, the thing that probably saved
me, was the strict discipline involved in music that automatically
carried over into the photography. There was no such thing as
"schools" in photography at that time. It was a very sloppy art,
and only a very few people gave it any critical or technical
dignity. There was no training in photography to speak of.
So I could have been a real "sloppy Joe" photographically, if
it hadn't been for the discipline which is absolutely required for
music.
When you first started taking photographs and doing your own
printing, did you print and print and print from the same negative
to teach yourself how to do it?
Oh yes. Well, in the first period, it was empirical — trial and
error, over and over and over, until I got some results. Then
later on, when I established the technical basis of the Zone
System, then I knew much better what I was doing. But I still
have to print quite a number of times to get the expressive result,
because you can't put that on a slide rule. The fact is that it is
so completely subtle, you can't really physically describe it.
You said yesterday that Mr. Mazzeo was a good photographer and not
a very good painter.
Well, I'll put it this way: his prints in no way come up to what
he sees. Now, this "seeing" is used in quotes. As Edward Weston.
would say, the "seeing" is not adequate, or the "seeing" is great.
As I've mentioned before, the internal event and the external event
are so terribly important. And with people like Mazzeo being
interested in birds and things — the external event is really what
interests him. He does pictures because the subject interests him,
and he conveys the subject. But he doesn't have the design sense
that Brett Weston has or Edward Weston had, for whom the photograph
becomes an object and not just a record of a subject. It becomes
something in itself. But Mazzeo is a great musician! I
Are there people who can make a good negative but can't print it,
and people who can print but not make a good negative?
Well, put it this way: there are many people who could make
absolutely adequate negatives with no expressive intention. And it
comes down to a complicated thing: your visualization is in relation
298
Adams: to the final Image, and it usually works out that the person doesn't
make a good negative because he's failed in some way to visualize.
Then in some way, by hook or crook, he does the best he can in the
darkroom, you see.
I have many very bad negatives that I can take to the darkroom
and really do a lot to bring up some expressive quality. But I can
have an absolutely perfect negative, and if I didn't have the
feeling or the sensitivity, simply nothing would happen. In many
cases I've taken other people's photographs, like some of the early
photographs, and have made prints which were, frankly, much better
than anything they made technically, because I have better materials
and controls than they had.
When I say better, I mean the print had more impact. And I
know that Bill Webb has done the same thing with the [Adam Clark]
Vroman negatives. He's made really wonderful images; much better
images than Vroman ever made. And in my case, the two examples are
the San Francisco fire and the Chinatown street of Arnold Genthe.
Genthe's prints are notoriously weak and fuzzy and (quote) "artistic"
(unquote). And it's the same thing with his records of the fire.
They're pretty tough; some of those negatives are very, very bad.
Teiser: How about O'Sullivan? Did you improve — ?
Adams: I never worked with any O'Sullivan negative. I certainly improved
on the Bradys, but I never printed any O'Sullivan or Jackson. I
printed some Wittick, Brady [pause] — well, when we say Brady, we
don't know who — it could be any one of his photographers.
You see, Brady was a promoter, not a photographer. He had a
business called Matthew Brady, and he employed photographers. And
on the envelopes of all these negatives that were put in the
National Archives were written the name of the photographer. But
he never gave them credit in the published work. Only more recent
historians have done that.
But Roy Stryker, when he took on the farm resettlement project —
you know, the big "dust bowl" job — always gave the photographers
leading credit. It would be a photograph of such and such "by
Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration Historical Project, Roy
Stryker, director." That was the way it would be documented — the
photographer always got the leading line.
Teiser: I'm sorry, I took you away from —
Adams: The music —
Teiser: You were telling us yesterday, after we were taping, about the kind
of pianist you were and are, and how your technique differs from —
299
Adams: Well, probably that sounded a little too pompous. The fact remains
that I have a very light hand. I have an ideal violin hand. And
my very good friend, Cedric Wright, who was a violinist, had an
ideal piano hand — we should have grafted them. [Laughs]
In any event , my technique was based largely on the dynamic
finger action. I think it would be called the Leschetizky method.
Now that goes back to the turn of the century, and the fundamental
technical pattern is that you lift, strike, and relax. You
practice hours: you lift, strike, and relax, until it becomes
absolutely free. If you lift, strike, and hold down, you
immediately tighten; then you have no flexibility.
Then the same thing would apply to the wrist for certain
things. Now, there's a difference in the relaxing — it would be
legato (because the key is held down), or it would be a portamento,
or it would be a staccato. Then to reinforce the sound, I would
bring in some weight. But, there are whole schools of weight
playing in which you sort of "pour in" your weight. You see people
using shoulder or arm, and that almost invariably results in less
brilliance of tone. The ideal situation is that you balance them
out — your weight and your dynamics — depending on your hand structure.
Now, Victor Babin, the late pianist, he was really marvelous.
He had very large hands. And he had complete control — magnificent
finger action and complete weight control. And he could produce
the most incredible sounds!
Harold Bauer, when he was playing a concerto with an orchestra,
could actually imitate the quality of an instrument. If a flute
or string passage was to come, say with a Schumann concerto, his
piano would take on that quality. Now it's all illusionary,
because it really can't imitate; it still is a percussion instrument.
But it isn't the way you hit one key; it's the time, the dynamics,
in which you hit the next key.
You see, there's no real way in which you can change the sound
of the piano at all. Now, the harpsichord is different; you strike
it and you can vibrate, and you can get a little pulse in the sound.
But the piano — the hammer strikes the key and retracts. So there's
no control but volume and the relationship to the next note.
Intuitively, it probably could be explained. I think even [H.L.F.
von] Helmholtz touched on that. He explained that when you strike
a note — and this depends not only on the fact that it's a piano or
an organ, but say that it's a piano, upright, square, or grand —
when you strike that note, you have produced the fundamental tone,
and then you have a whole series of harmonics , and those harmonics
are not necessarily the same that you get with the open strings.
But they're there. They're even within the part of the strings that
300
Adams: are dampened. There's a very subtle resolution. And then you
anticipate this resolution, and you play the next note; and in
anticipating it, you also have to bring in this psychophysical law.
So a beautiful touch is something that makes the sounds seem to
flow with absolute completion. You don't worry about them at all.
And a poor touch — we all know what that is. It drives you up the
wall. Because here's people playing precisely — everything that's
written, playing everything in time, in unison — but they have not
got this sense of the connecting sequence, which can't be called
just simply "legato." It is legato, but that's too simple a term.
And in photography, when you're photographing actions — I think
I mentioned Cartier-Bresson as anticipatory. There's a girl who's
walking toward us, toward the camera, and I anticipate her; I want
her at a certain place. If I wait until she's there, she's caught
beyond! So I have to see this possibility and feel all the
relationships. There is about one-tenth second delay between
"seeing" and operating the shutter.
But now getting to the music-photography relationship. I don't
see anything except certain standards of discipline, which are
obvious, and then standards of taste or aesthetics. It's impossible
for me to think of people spending their lives in music and not
having good taste in the other arts. But that is not the case,
because I have been in music studios — in New York, some of my good
friends , very fine musicians — with the worst possible furniture and
the worst possible things on the wall you could imagine. I mean,
absolutely no sensitivity for the visual.
So there's nothing cut and dried in this relationship!
Teiser: What about the very simple thing of manual dexterity?
Adams: Finger dexterity is something which is very important — well, unless
you're crippled, as I partially am with arthritis now — nobody has
any trouble with a camera. It's rather a gross instrument in a way.
Some people are very rough with cameras and mistreat a delicate
instrument. That's something else. But I can still set the shutter
with accuracy, and I can still operate the camera. I may have
difficulty lifting it onto the tripod. The dexterity is really
partly when you're developing films in the tray that you get a very
sensitive feeling of the finger in handling these things. But I
don't think being a pianist or not would have any effect on that.
Now, if you were a watchmaker or putting a shutter together or
something, that's another world. But I really don't think dexterity
in general is so important .
301
The Friends of Photography
Teiser: We spoke yesterday about the Friends of Photography. Do you want
to go into that now?
Adams: Yes. Well, that's a continuation of my attitude towards the f/64
group. In other words, not exactly the same motivation. But, there
was no place, anywhere in the West, where a group of creative people
got together. And I thought about it, and we talked about it. And
one day Cole Weston came out; he was managing the Sunset Center [in
Carmel]. He said, "Well, if you want to do something in photography,
there's a space available for a gallery." And that sort of triggered
it off, and I got ahold of Wynn Bullock and Mazzeo and a few others.
"Let's do something about this." [Interruption]
We saw the space, and then we got very busy and raised a
little money, and then organized the Friends of Photography. It
was a pro tern committee which secured the place. Our lawyer then
drew up the articles of incorporation, which we signed, and this
committee then became secondary to the fundamental bylaws and the
election of officers and so on, as a charitable, tax-deductible
institution. So we're tax-deductible. If you wish to give us ten
thousand dollars, we'd accept it with the greatest of joy, and you
could take it off your income tax. If you can make it more, why
we'd much appreciate it. [Laughter]
We've had phenomenal success with shows; we haven't any money.
We've brought some beautiful work to the area — have produced publi
cations and two portfolios. Bill Turnage came, primarily to work
for me, and he had several other things to manage. He acted as
the director and really did a fantastic job in waking us up — made
a lot of us very mad because he told the truth. You know that
usually happens. He's a mover and a shaker, and he did his job of
organizing and telling us the truth — analyzing the full situation.
And then on Turnage 's advice we appointed Fred Parker as the
regular executive director. He's a curator and a museum man and an
expert in photography, and there were very, very few trained
curators, art historians, or gallery persons in the world of
photography to draw upon. That's one thing that we now have to
stress.
I think that the Princeton center, which David McAlpin has just
initiated, will start developing such people. You see, it's not
necessary for them to be photographers. The curator of painting or
the museum director is not necessarily a painter. But we've had
few of these for photographers to call on, and their opinion is
usually biased; it can't be anything else. I've tried it; I've
run things. But it's just incredibly hard for a photographer to be
objective.
302
Teiser: What is the center that McAlpin's given?
Adams: The Princeton University Art Museum photography center. He's
founded a chair of photography. Peter Bunnell is running it. And
it's primarily related to the history of photography. He gave one
million dollars, which it costs to set up a chair. People never
think about a million dollars. What can one do with a million?
Well, normally you have to put it in securities, and out of that,
you get 50 percent — fifty thousand a year.
That's an irrevocable trust, and that pays Bunnell's salary
and the space charges, and operating cost, and a secretary. You
can't do very much with fifty thousand a year in a big institutional
way. But you can train people who come and work through Princeton
in the various departments. Now, of course, the term "museology"
is really related to the physical care or the restoration or the
analysis of paintings and works of art. A curator is somebody who
has an art historian's knowledge in the field, you see, and cares
for and controls the prints in relation to this knowledge. The
museum director is somebody who just says what's going to be done.
The curator, by the way, usually has to prepare and hang the
exhibits.
But the director — he has to know a lot, or should know a lot —
but he also has the administration and politics and finance on his
neck, you see.
Teiser: And your director of the Friends is up to all those things.
Adams: Well — we're very small. He was curator of photography at the
Pasadena Museum. Now he could move into a position like this chair
at Princeton. I don't think he would like it too much. His ideal
would be the curator of photography in some big institution, say
the Metropolitan. That would be an objective goal. But here he is
running the exhibits, he's running the workshops and the
publications. But it's all subject to the approval of committees
on the board, which it should be for saving his own neck. We
haven't disagreed yet.* But it's very important for the trustees
to keep control.
Some directors will say, "Well, I don't want to be subject to
anybody. I want to run the whole thing." That's one of the worst
things you could let anyone do. Because why not share your mistakes
[laughs] — psychologically and otherwise? But we've had a very good
board. Liliane De Cock is on the board, for example.
Teiser: Are most of the members on the board photographers?
*We did later. [A. A.]
303
Adams: Too many. We were practically all photographers at one time. Now
we're stretching it more, because again, a complete board of just
photographers is biased. And we have some members who just can't
see any other work but their own. I mean it's very difficult for
an exhibitor to criticize exhibits, because it doesn't look like
the kind of photography that they believe in. Well, that's not
our function. And Fred Parker, with his very big knowledge of
photography, can get us exhibits of the photography of our time.
Now, I would say that half the shows that we've had there I don't
like, from the personal point of view. But I have no right to pass
that judgment. I don't like Rubens, and I don't like Picasso, but
I'm very fond of Rouault. So you wouldn't expect me, if I ran a
museum, to concentrate on Rouault. I'd have to admit the existence
of Picasso. [Interruption]
Well, so the Friends are a growing institution, and of course
I want to withdraw when it's reasonable to do so and concentrate
on my own work. I think it's terrible for people to stay on and on
and on and on in any institution.
Teiser: I imagine that it wouldn't have become a real organization without
your leadership , however —
Adams: Well, I think probably I'd have to accept that fact. Not from the
point of view of conceit, but because of experience with the
Museum of Modern Art and many other things of its type. The Sierra
Club — thirty-four years on the board there — I learned something
about management at the board level.' And then I'm very well known.
So you put all these things together on a purely objective level,
and of course I would be useful to some degree.
Teiser: What is the geographical area of this' group? Is it really national?
Adams: We want to make it national. We've had exhibits from all over. One
of the things we wanted to avoid is being a camera club. Camera
clubs are really social clubs, like little men's chowder and
marching societies [laughter] — and are not interested in photography
as an advanced art but more as a hobby. The Photographic Society
of America represents the camera club and hobbyist and practically
nobody else. It's another world. It's a very difficult thing to
explain, but you just go and look at a photographic salon by the
pictorial group and you see a totally different thing than when you
see a serious, creative, dedicated work.
Teiser: There's a man in San Francisco who I think you must have known, who
I think was a photography club man. Francis Brugiere —
Adams: Brugiere. Well now, he was rather unusual. He was quite an artist.
But there was no outlet for photographic art, so he did function
through the only thing that existed to function in photography — the
304
Adams: camera club. But he did many things with light — photograms,
reflections, abstract things that are really quite extraordinary.
But I don't know enough about him to give you any authentic
information. It would be like Ann Brigman, you see, who did some
remarkable images which Stieglitz liked. But the only place she
could show was at the camera clubs .
Teiser: I rather suspected that Brugiere was better than most.
Adams: Oh yes, he was very much ahead.
Then, I forget the man that ran Camera Craft for so long. He
was a nice man, but boy I He had what you call "Kodak taste." He
was right down the pictorial line.
The Friends are a going organization, we hope. I think we've
accomplished a lot, and now photography is becoming a very big
factor in the art world. Scores, even hundreds of college depart
ments, hundreds of workshops — some are bad, some are good, but it's
now being recognized.
And a museum will have a photography show. Heretofore, you'd
have Stieglitz and Strand and Weston — that would be about it. Then
[Eliot] Porter and I got in, and some of the Europeans — Cartier-
Bresson, Andre Kertesz, a few others, but it still was always
played pretty much on the safe side.
Now they're really showing much younger people. Liliane's
had some fine shows. She's got one coming up at the Amon Carter
Museum, and I think at the Art Institute in Chicago — I'm not sure.
She's had some very good exhibits — at this level of an artist, which
is the thing that we have to maintain in photography. It's a very
difficult point.
You see, it's up to the photographer to maintain his work at
the level of the artist. The painter and the sculptor automatically
assume that they do. "I'm a sculptor — I'm in the fine arts." Of
course I might be a lousy sculptor, but still, I'm automatically
there. A photographer never has quite that conviction. That's one
of the reasons — the insecurity — why so many photographers talk so
much. You know, to justify their own work and try to mystically
explain the inner unmeanings.
Teiser: .1 know the Friends of Photography is not like the Eastman House,
but —
Adams: The Friends of The Bancroft Library would be people who'd go out to
raise money for the library. Well, we might have the "Friends of
the Friends of Photography" some day. It's what we need. [Laughter]
But there are friends of almost anything — friends of the sea otter.
It's a vague term — it means supporters.
305
Teiser: Well, do I remember that the Eastman House group has published and
shown exhibits and sent exhibits around —
Adams: It's not got a big membership. It is a nonprofit membership
institution. But they never went out after many members. They
were very generous to their members . We were too generous in
giving each of ours the portfolios. We had about twelve thousand
dollars tied up in portfolios that haven't sold yet. Every member
got a free copy. And they're beautifully reproduced.
But you'll always find that there's something wrong with
whatever you do. "Why did you make this selection?" "I didn't
think that picture was any good." And the next person will say,
"Well, I think that's one of the best things in it." When I did my
Portfolio V it was extraordinary because there were two or three
images which most people liked. But every one was liked by a
number of people. And that's kind of lucky, because sometimes
there'll be one or two that will be by-passed entirely.
Museums and Critics
Teiser: To go back in time — to other exhibits of photographs — in 1931 you
had an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution called "Pictorial
Photographs of the Sierra Nevada Mountains" —
Adams: Everything is wrong: "pictorial" is wrong, "Sierra Nevada" is
wrong, "Mountains" is wrong. [Laughs] We all use that, but
Francis Farquhar — oh, he used to go wild over that.
Teiser: But that was what they called it.
Adams: Well, that was just like the name they gave Parmelian Prints , I
guess.
Teiser: Was that your first major exhibit?
Adams: I wouldn't consider the Smithsonian at that time as having any
status as an exhibit place. They showed curiosities and scenes and
such things, but I don't think they had museum status. It even
doesn't have what you'd call really museum status, although of late
it's getting there.
Teiser: How did they happen to know about you?
Adams: Well, word of mouth. Francis Farquhar, somebody. Bradford
Washburn of course had shown a lot of his Mount McKinley pictures.
But the Smithsonian has always related more or less to science,
306
Adams: travel, invention. And boy, when Beaumont [Newhall] and I went
there, they had their exhibit of photographs of early Fox Talbots
[photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot] up in the top floor
under the skylight, completely unprotected. And these things
were literally fading. And I blew my top. I said, "Beaumont,
can't you do something about it?" He said, "You don't understand
the museum world. I could no more go down there and criticize
this curator!" He said, "You could," you see, because I wasn't
in the museum world. And I wrote a very strong letter, first
thing. I said, "As a photographer, subjecting these invaluable
photographs, some of the most important things ever done —
subjecting them to this unfiltered light is — well, it's incompre
hensible." There were other people who were upset too. They did
finally cover these cases with a yellow glass filter. Still it
was a poor job.
So then I went to Dearborn to see the Ford collection [at the
Henry Ford Museum] of [William Henry] Jackson photographs. We were
trying to get something for the "Brady and the American Frontier"
exhibit. They had fourteen thousand glass plates in a loft of one
of their big buildings, and the temperature was about 110°.
Fortunately, it was dry. But collodion won't take too much
temperature. And I blew my top there. . I told this man, I said,
"I think keeping these plates here is absolutely disastrous. I'm
no chemist, but this heat is such a hazard" — the sun beating on the
roof. He said, "I think we know what we're doing, Mr. Adams." I
said, "Well, I guess perhaps you don't. I would say this could
lead to a most serious deterioration." Well, I wrote a letter to
Henry Ford II about it. But you see, I'm not in the museum world;
I was clear. I could do this. But if Beaumont [Newhall] had done
that, he'd have been immediately blacklisted in the profession.
Because you never criticize another curator — like a doctor, you
see. A doctor can't go and say anything negative about any other
doctor — unless he is a downright fake. But even then you have to
be very careful.
And when one doctor criticizes another, it's always by
innuendo. They say, "Well, some people will go to anybody." Never
really say that Dr. Jones is an impostor I
But photographers — among the good ones — as soon as a photogra
pher knows another one is sincere, he usually is very supportive.
But he also can get hideously jealous. That happens in music too;
I suppose all the arts. I know some very unfortunate high-level
jealousy among some of the very top people. And it's purely
psychological, because they have nothing to be jealous about.
A lot of people are jealous of me because of my apparent
success in selling prints. I'm not conservative in spirit. My
work is fairly "set" — you know, it's me, and it belongs to another
307
Adams: and earlier period. The criticism I get quite often is that — well,
I'm dead, I'm finished. I've had people tell me that to my face.
"Why don't you go and retire. You're through; you haven't done
anything new for years." I say, "You're perfectly right. But I
may." [Laughter]
It's very hard to judge things such as methods of photography
or any art at its own level. Another thing that's been very
serious in the museum world is that the dealer world has been one
of the extraordinary merchandising machines of the times. These
people like Warhol and others will have an exhibit, and an agent
will take them on. Now, the agent promotes them, and within a
short time this man is the "greatest artist of our time." And
people are like sheep. They get a page in Time. You'll see very
often Newsweek and Time will have the same story. Now, that comes
right out of the publicity offices. It's all very well engineered.
And they like to come out at the same time because one doesn't want
to follow the other.
Then I've heard a museum man say, "Veil, I was considering
Harry, but you know, he's about six months passe now." [Laughter]
It's the truth. And I said to one curator, "Well, does that in any
way influence Harry's quality?" He said, "No, but he's just dead.
He's not up with the times, he's not with it." Well, in six months
time, you know —
Goya is still with it. [Laughter] And El Greco is still with
it. And I'd say that the early period of Picasso is to me
extremely moving. And I never can accept the later period. I
think he had his tongue in cheek in a lot of it, and I know a lot
of contemporary art which is far more abstract and far out than
Picasso, which moves me deeply. But again, not being a museum man,
not being a trained art historian, I have no right to say that as
anything more than a strictly personal reaction.
Some say, "I don't like Joe, and I think Harry's a good guy,
and what's the matter with Jim?" It has nothing to do with the
real value of the people as artists. It's just their own reaction.
And the critics! We are trying to train now in photography
knowledgeable critics , because there are very few of them — and
many are needed. A painter cannot criticize a photograph.
Teiser: There's Mrs. Mann?
Adams: Oh yes, Marjorie Mann. Well, she's a psychological case. She
writes sometimes brilliantly, but she has just decided that some
thing's wrong in photography and she's going to set it right. I
would say that Mann is inclined to be rather brutal and inconsiderate
When she's writing about something she knows, she's fine, but she
immediately tied onto the Friends of Photography as being nothing
308
Adams: but an old fogey organization perpetuating the West Coast school.
Well, she came to the first opening. We told her what we were
going to do. And immediately she decides we show only the classics.
Well, then she hit a couple of other shows that were of
somewhat conservative type, and she missed all the ones that were
highly contemporary and experimental. I think she missed the
platinum show, which was history, and she missed the — oh gosh, I
just can't begin to tell you. So she has a total misconception.
Now, her influence is considerable. So before Fred Parker knew
about us, he had that impression through her writing. And then
when he came and looked at the series of exhibits that we had, he
said, "I want to apologize for my previous opinion. Why didn't
somebody tell me?"
We had Van Deren Coke class work from the University of New
Mexico. We had the Institute of Design, we had Todd Walker — we
went all over the map; a very fine cross section of what's going
on in photography. We had the Visual Dialogue show, with photo
sculpture — things in the round and in plastic. So one of our big
problems is to show to the world that we have a very catholic
approach.
But you see if you can be a belligerant critic, if you can be
a showoff, if you can make everybody feel that you're right out
there crusading — you can get a lot of attention.
Her [Mann's] own photographs are simply terrible — the weakest
things. I think she never should photograph. A critic should be
absolutely objective. Most art critics are not painters — they've
studied art, they're art historians. Beaumont is a superb critic
in photography, about the only one that really exists.
Teiser: Does he write that analytically?
Adams: Well, I'm trying to get him to do it, but Beaumont's a rather mild,
kindly person, and he's interested in the history of photography,
and for him there's no difference between the past and the present.
It's a continuous flow. He can pick up from my work things that
happened a hundred years ago and vice versa. Not that we're
imitating, but it's just a broad approach to the world, you see.
Now, a typical happening is — somebody wrote me a letter: "How
did Stieglitz get these rich qualities?" I wrote a letter back
saying as best I could that the chances were that the rich qualities
he saw were a psychological effect due to his wonderful sense of
values. And I sent that letter on to Beaumont, and he was able to
say, well, the values are a little extreme in some cases, in lantern
slides, for example, because Stieglitz intensified them with
mercury. But mercury isn't permanent. He didn't know it at the
time, so all those slides are gone.
309
Adams: I have some intensified in mercury and chromium that have gone too!
It isn't permanent. It's very complex. You add mercuric salts to
the silver, and the result is a kind of mutual deterioration. The
negative just turns a ghastly yellow, and I don't know of any way
to get it back.
Teiser: I was impressed that someone writing so seriously in a popular
photographic magazine would get as much space as Mrs. Mann has.
Adams: Well, she approached it as a profession.
There's [A.D.] Coleman, who writes for the New York Times, and
he seems pretty erudite. I think he's been pretty good.
Now, Jacob Deschin, who wrote for the [New York] Times first,
is a very nice man, but he really knows nothing about photography.
He really started writing about photo products. And people used to
look at that column like we look at Herb Caen, and believe it, you
know. A lot of people never enjoy a concert until they've read
the paper the next morning. But of course Deschin wasn't really
in that critical class at all.
There's a very interesting story about Beaumont. You see,
Nancy [Newhall] designed my big show in San Francisco [the 1963
exhibit at the de Young Museum]. And one of the photographic
magazines asked would Beaumont write a criticism of it. And
Beaumont, being a professional and not having enough money, said,
"Yes, but it must be professional." They said, "We'll pay your
way to San Francisco as an honorarium." Which is all right. He
said, "Now, there are my wife and one of my close friends there
who could do it." They said, "No, no, we trust you." So he came
out.
Well, Beaumont wrote a perfectly beautiful analysis of the
show and of my different periods of work and was very objective.
He took the text to the editor, and the editor said, "Gee, this is
pretty good writing, but can't you find anything wrong with it?"
And Beaumont said, "Well, the function of criticism is not to find
something wrong. It's to interpret. But," he said, "no, I can't
find anything wrong with it. There's a few prints — quite a few
prints that I wouldn't have put in myself, but there's nothing
wrong with it in the total sense."
But then, it makes people feel very superior to have somebody
say, "Well, it's obvious that Paul Strand has done some very bad
things," or "This picture doesn't hold a candle to that" — you know,
some needling remarks. It's like the old Roman arena and the
gladiators, I guess. They just like to see people taken apart.
And most of the photographic criticism has been that way.
310
Adams: The art criticism has been much better because the critics have
been much more erudite — and the same with music. There was a
famous music critic at the Examiner many, many years ago. Or
maybe it was the Chronicle. I think it was Rosenthal who played,
and after the intermission the manager came out and said there had
been a mistake in the program, and Mr. Rosenthal is not going to
play this, he's going to play this and this and this. What do
you think — the next morning in the newspaper here's a glowing de
scription of what Mr. Rosenthal didn't play. And the critic heard
him. I saw him there. Then he left to write and meet the deadline.
He maybe, after all, had heard Rosenthal do the "Fantasy" of Liszt,
you know, or the "Don Juan Suite," or whatever was on the program,
so he just wrote about them.
Imagine the embarrassment of writing a critique about something
that wasn't played. [Laughs] He was a very kindly man, and he was
terribly embarrassed. The next week he wrote a letter of apology
and explained why — that he'd heard Rosenthal many times and knew
how he would perform. But still, it was an inexcusable breach.
But everybody thought it was a good joke. [Laughter]
[End Tape 12, Side 1]
[Begin Tape 12, Side 2]
Teiser: To get back to your exhibits — the one you would perhaps consider
your first real exhibit. It was a one-man show in 1932 at the
de Young. It was before the f/64 show.
Adams: I think that would be fairly important. [Lloyd] Rollins, the
director, was way ahead of his time; he did a great service to
photography in the fact that he did show it. He showed Weston, he
showed Brett [Weston], and he showed me, and he showed others, and
he showed f/64, and he had the museum trustees down on him for
wasting space on photographs.
The whole Art Association in San Francisco has had a vendetta
against photography as long as I can remember. They resent any
space [used for it] because to them photography is not art. And
my dearest friends, people like Colonel [C.E.S.] Wood and Sara
Bard Field, would take me aside: "You could go anywhere in music.
Why did you choose photography? The camera cannot express the
human soul."
I told Stieglitz that. Stieglitz said, "Oh, so?" [Laughs]
I mean, making this romantic failure, I guess you'd call it, to see
what you saw and feel it was just as spiritual an accomplishment as
what a painter could do. But to them (they were a generation before
me, you see), it was a mechanical process. You click and then you
311
Adams: develop and then you print, that's it. But they don't realize all
the magical visualization and controls that go into it. And this
is terribly important. [Interruption]
Teiser: Your show at the de Young, then, in '32, was of prints that you
had recently made?
Adams: Yes, most of the early better things.
You see, I have a big problem now, that I'm probably the most
disorganized photographer that ever lived, and probably the one
who has the greatest number of things to fight with and combat, in
items and early pictures. And for my show in San Francisco that's
coming up, I have to go out to that darkroom and I have to start
in from the beginning.
Proper Disposition of Photographs
Adams: I have hundreds of prints, and twenty-five, thirty thousand
negatives, and of course some are useless and some are of purely
historic value. I should take my early pictures of Yosemite —
negatives — and give them to some historical [organization], like
the Yosemite Natural History Association, because there's
thousands of pictures that are just "Ridge No. 3," "Peak X," etc.
Well, they'd take them and look at them over a period of forty or
fifty years — watch for the changes. That's very important
scientifically.
And I've had a little struggle over what to do in relation to
The Bancroft [Library] because — where do the prints go? Well, in
fact we're having a discussion with some good friends this summer
about what's going to happen to this place.
Teiser: The Bancroft has new space being planned —
Adams: Well, if any architect at all knows his salt, he would make purely
archival conditions for collections. But the point is, The
Bancroft is historical and I sent up all the Sierra Club papers —
I just sent up all kinds of things. Now, when you come to a
photographic collection of prints, if it's purely art items it
should go to a different place, I think — an art repository. The
Bancroft have a lot of early California things, but that's not
necessarily art.
Now, Edward Weston's pictures were given to the library at
Santa Cruz by a friend, anonymously. He's given eight hundred of
them, and this could be the nucleus of a photographic collection.
312
Adams: But there were forty prints of Edward Weston over at Monterey
Peninsula College, and nobody recognized what they had. They were
in drawers without slipsheets on them, and the students would take
them out and prop them up carelessly. Finally we got terribly sore
over that and we had them all overmatted, and really — when we told
them they were worth five hundred dollars apiece on the market,
they immediately made a flip. They are very nice people, but they
were absolutely opaque to the quality of these prints.
And this is the kind of thing that we really have to consider
in disposition of creative work.
Now, the pictures I have of Yosemite and of the California of
my time, and so on — they are history. If they're fine photographs,
that's good too. But I have many photographs that have nothing to
do with the subjects of history. How is The Bancroft going to
handle it? It belongs in a different category. It belongs with a
photography collection in a photography department. And once you
give a thing, you have no control over it.
The Huntington Library has a magnificent collection of Edward
Weston photographs, and I think they're taking care of it. But
they are isolated.
Teiser: They have a very good group of yours, too.
Adams: Yes, I've heard that. I don't know. But in Edward Weston 's [case],
some donor gave five hundred prints I think valued at twelve dollars
apiece. Paid Edward that, and Edward made six thousand dollars.
These photographs are now worth a fortune — forty thousand dollars.
They're scarce as hen's teeth. An original good condition Weston
print is worth at least eight hundred dollars today.
Well, now, I'm getting two hundred dollars for the 16 by 20s.*
If I were to die tomorrow, those things would immediately go to
one thousand dollars or more, like Stieglitz. You couldn't buy a
Stieglitz today. I have one that should come back pretty soon.
It's loaned out on a museum tour. I insured it for six thousand
dollars. I know two people who'd give me ten thousand dollars for
that picture. And that is ridiculous, you see, because Stieglitz
is dead. There's only two of these in existence. So it has
nothing to do with the art value. So what do I do? Do I
capitalize on these things?
*Five hundred dollars after July 1974. [A. A.]
313
Financial Practicalities
Adams: There's a terrible thing that happened with the estate of David
Smith, the sculptor; the IRS has come in to his studio, with all
these things, and has put a death tax on the dealer's value, which
goes into millions. And the estate can't possibly pay it.
And what happened with Stieglitz — he never took a cent out of
the gallery. And Marin and [Arthur] Dove and O'Keeffe, they'd
bring their paintings and leave them there — a good, safe depository,
Well, he died, and in comes the IRS, and they say, "Oh, there's an
O'Keeffe — twelve thousand dollars," which is what it would have
sold for. And here were a hundred Marins at twelve thousand
dollars apiece, and so on. And they went up into fantastic sums.
The estate said, "We don't own these. It was just that they were
on consignment." "Well, show us the papers." Well, there were no
papers. He never gave anybody a receipt; they were all "family."
So it took the combined effort of two top New York lawyers and
McAlpin and somebody else to go down to Washington and state the
situation, that these paintings belonged to the artists.
So you see you're in a very difficult situation in any
artistic value. On the other hand, I could take one of my two-
hundred-dollar prints and give it to the Institute of Foreign
Studies for an auction, and the only thing is that they can't sell
it for less than the going price, because that wouldn't be fair to
the clients. But I want nothing for it at all. I give it to them.
All I can take off of my income tax is ten dollars.
Teiser: Why?
Adams: Because the artist can only take off his material costs. That's
the new reading. Now you can buy that print for ten dollars from
me and give it to the Institute. Then its value is two hundred
dollars, and you can take that off your income tax.
Teiser: You mentioned the other day that prints were not, earlier,
collected or bought. When did it start?
Adams: No. Well, Stieglitz sold a few. God knows how few. Strand —
Teiser: How did Strand